Pioneer is well respected manufacturer for top quality home cinema products, and it ranks amongst the top few manufacturers of DVD players, up there with Sony, Toshiba and Panasonic. Pioneer is well known for impeccable build quality and excellent performance and the DV-626D is a brilliant example of just what Pioneer can do.
After searching though review magazines and browsing the internet, I decided the pioneer was the one to go for. Main features include onboard Dolby Digital and DTS decoders, duel laser pickup, Pal/NTSC output, Digital noise reduction, conditional memory, Virtual Dolby Surround... I know what you're probably thinking... WHAT??? So I'll go through them as best as I can to make things a little clearer.
One of the main features of DVD is its ability to hold surround soundsoundtracks. This means that with the right set up you can have sound coming from all
around you, just like in a cinema. To do this you need a DECODER, to turn the data on the disc into audio and an amplifier, to give the sound volume. You can buy Dolby Digital decoders/amps for £300 and much more, but if you have an old Dolby Pro logic box (the kind that decode TV surround sound) you can use the decoders built into the Pioneer 626 and so you needn't upgrade. The amplifier does have to have 5.1 channel inputs though. Unlike many players (including Sony's competitor the 725) the pioneer decodes DTS as well as Dolby Digital. DTS is DD's competitor and to my ears sounds a little richer and more refined, but is not very widely used on Region 2 DVDs.Although DVD purists may cringe at the idea of using built in decoders, to most peoples ears, they sound great and the Pioneer's are superb.
In fact, the pioneer impresses all round as far as sound is concerned as it reproduces not only film soundtracks, but also music cds with amazing finess. In fact it could easily match the sound on a £200 + cd player. If you record your own cds, you would be interested to know that the pioneer has dual laser pickup. This means it can read recorded CDRs and CDRWs - very useful. This means it can also read Video cds on CDR as well as pre-recorded ones.
In order to make this player multiregion, it needs to be chipped (you can either buy it pre-chipped or pay for an upgrade). This means unlike some players, you cant just type in a code. If it is chipped and you play Region 1 discs from america, the player can usefully output in either PAL or NTSC. This means that if your TV doen't support NTSC, the player will convert it to PAL for you.
Digital Noise Reduction, automatically reduces any digital noise on found on the dvd - (pretty obvious). This isn't that important in my opinion as DVDs have such low noise levels anyway.
Conditional memory and Last disc resume, keep the settings and remembers the place you were when you pressed stop respectively. Although I don’t mess around with the settings much, I do find the resume function useful as it saves finding the chapter and stuff which can be ennoying.
Virtual Dolby is more of a gimmick than a useful function of the player. Like many players, this tries to recreate surround sound from just two speakers - clever... not realy, like every player, it fails. In reality it just adds an echo delay which I think muffles the sound abit, but then again, the feature does no harm being there.
The picture performance is great, sharp, vibrant images are produced. But make sure you set up the video tweaks first, otherwise it can all go rather pear-shaped! According to Home cinema choice (who know these things) the best settings are probably..
Don’t ask me what all these things mean, but fiddle away to your hearts delight. The Pioneer is easy to use from the word go, easily understandable menus guide you through the set-up process. Even installing the system is easy thanks to the understandable instruction manual. Once your set up, insert a dvd and you’re ready to go and if at any time you want to change anything, press the menu button and a useful sceen comes up with tabs for audio, video, general… The 626 has optical and Coaxial digital output, this means it can be connected to any digital decoder or minidisc recorder. If you wish to do the later you can set up the output to be PCM, and it will automatically downmix movie music to 48khz if you want it to. This is not usually of any use though as the player prohibits recording of copyrighted discs. Analogue only then.
The player also has 96khz decoding which makes cds sound even better if you have an amp that supports it. Look round the back of the player, and you’ll find outputs galore - 5.1 output, 2 sets of stereo outputs, 2 s-video sockets, 2 composite video outputs, optical and coaxial audio and a scart for RGB, composite and stereo audio. There’s no component video or 2nd scart if that’s important for you.
You can also turn off the display of the player and select which speakers you have connected for ultimate flexibility.
So, in summary, the Pioneer DV-626D rocks big time. Amazing visuals, stunning audio in CD and DVD replay and loads of useful features. It makes a £600 DVD player a little uneasy and retails at around £350 – a bargain!
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