Pioneer DVR 440 HX S

Author's product rating:   

Picture Playback	Good
Sound Level	Good
Ease of Use	Simple
Range of Features	Excellent
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Records to both HDD and DVD,Freeview
Disadvantages:	Not HD ready,Discontinued model

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I have owned a HDD freeview recorder for moore than 2 years now (Humax PVR 800T). brought before twin tuner HDD devices existed within my price bracket. I needed ,Wanted to save a few films and TV programmes I had on the HDD.I also wished to transfer recordings I have on video tape onto DVD.
So went out and about searching for a DVD recorder with a HDD and freeview tuner and came across this model.

Set up was easy and navigating wasnt too hard as each feature has its own menu.
The manual is thick...thats because you can do so much with this piece of equipment...and I recommend being patient and reading it all and keeping it to hand for a few days till you have acclimatised yourself to how to get the best from it.

There are two internal tuners one is freeview the other is analog which will be redundant in under 3 years from now but a handy choice to have in the meantime.

I dont think there is any DVD disc format the DVD player will not either play or record too.It will even play Div X and AVI files.But be sure to read the details in the manual to ensure compatibilty of the disc format you record in, to enable the disc to be played in other players.
The pause live TV feature does not work like you would expect it to. It takes it feed direct from your TV. I dont use it as It is easier to just record diect to the HDD from the inbuilt tuner and then use pause or rewind to watch anything I missed or I am currently watching.

The 7 Day EPG has two options either standard EPG you would find on any freeview tuner or a more advanced EPG or the Guide Plus +(r) I have not used this version yet as it requires 8 hours plus to get it updated and programmed off air. But it has many features such as preview thumbnails of upcoming programes,customisable channel selections,recording quality etc.which can be done within the standard EPG so you have a choice of TV guides not a common featrure on other tuners / recorders.

Once mastered operation is very easy I like the facility to alter the recording quality on the HDD, from super to poor quality the choice is yours but with 80Gb there is room for many many hours of recordings.
Setting up recording from with in the EPG is just a single button press. With the choice to record to HDD or to a DVD disc.

Also the feature that automatically adjusts the quality to fit the space on the inserted DVD discs is very handy,This recorder wil record Dual layer discs so 2 hour + films can be transfered to disc but you will not be able to record copyright protected films as you would expect from one disc to another.via the HDD.

depending on the format you choose when recording to the HDD will determine the transfer speed to the DVD discs when setting up recording choose the right format if you want high speed copying to be available.
Also the video mode you choose will determine the aspect ratio in pixels for instance 352/240 in lowest quality to 720/576 in highest the options are astounding.this will determine transfer rates and space used when recording on the HDD or DVD.
I mention all this because it means you have so many choices to please your requirements for each and every recording you make.There is a table in the the user guide to help you determine your requirements.

Navigating recordings on the HDD is easy and you get thumbnail previews that you can set playing jumps to 30 sec plus. You can edit what you have on the HDD before transfering ensuring you get rid of all those adverts or even edit material you just dont want transfered to the DVD disc.
You can even record from a camera so all those holiday,wedding videos can easily be saved to HDD for editing in a basic mode and you can even choose various menu templates for the DVD you create.
These are just a few of the features avaliable for you with this machine.

In use I found the HDD picture quality of Max resolution to be excellent you can even adjust the recording brightness and contrast and colour settings to suit.
The let down is the Remote control which I feel is cheap but the main buttons you would wish to use are big and easy to operate .there is a slider that slides down and locks which gives you access to many features like anything after a while you gbet used to the remote but think it could have been designed better.
The Machine is quiet enough in operation. and is styled OK not ugly neither something of real beauty somewhere inbetween.

As user guides go this is one of the better ones very well laid out and easy to understand.

Overall it does what I wanted and more.though this model is now superceeded it would be a good bargin second hand or as a clear out item. for what I paid i think its a great bargin (brought from new). And I would recommend it as it has many more features than any comparable machine for its price.