With the two new digital formats namley SACD & DVD-A disks on the market that are capable of multichannel high resolution sound Pioneer have come up trumphs with this machine. The DV-656A is one classy performer and capable of playing just about any 5" shiny disk you throw at it. This means that if any of the new formats fails you will still be able to play them without scrapping your machine and or software, remember VHS & BETAMAX?
The DV-656A is light in weight and the power supply is of the switchmode variety which does away with weighty mains stepdown transformers, thus reducing the weight. The box encompassing all the internals is a bit tinny, and the front facia looks average, but nicely styled. There is a basic dot matrix display but with no counter or text information. For information and settings the OSD has a decent layout and is fairly easy to use. The rear of the machine has loads of connectors with two scart and two s-video along with the added benefit of RGB phono connectors. Their are also the usual digital outputs with optical and coaxial connectors. On the audio side their are 2 stereo and the usual 6 multichannel outputs.
The remote is functional and fairly easy to use.
The picture quality is excellent, sharp and detailed with out smeering,and the colours are bright and clean. The blacks are black not a muddy dark brown you get with some machines.
Listening to DVD-A or SACD the audio is detailed and natural sounding is obvious that you are listening to high resolution software.
CD playback is O.K. but I would say that a good dedicated C.D. player would have the edge, but you can't have everything for £340.
In conclusion I would wholeheartedly recommend this machine it's a real cracker and well worth the money.
by (7%):
This product has not yet been reviewed.
03.01.2004 18:40
£340? wow