Component video, progressive scan output, extensive compliment of audio signal processing, sound and the picture

Light weight.

I have the 434 connected to a Hitachi 53SDX01B digital TV and it works wonderfully without the kind of problems with the progessive scan that others have complained about. This unit was manufactured in June, 2000 and maybe Pioneer made some modification. In any event, the picture is razor sharp, vivid, very well balanced for contrast, color etc. Audio signal processing is seemless and every bit the compliment for the picture. Operation is fairly uncomplicated and so far everything works as promissed. As a CD player I am just as happy with it though its primary job is that of a DVD.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer, Phillips, Sharp.

Progressive scan on the inexpensive side

Lousy remote; few connection options; poor track record with CD-Rs and CD-RWs; cheap

I recently bought the Pioneer DV434, mostly for Progressive Scan. I've never bought Pioneer, as I tend to think of their name as low-end.

I had no problems with this unit for the first 3 months. Generally a decent unit: fair playback, occasional skipping (mostly chapter-to-chapter), adequate resolution for a reasonably-priced player. I was not excited by the remote; bad layout, confusing, poorly designed (I programmed my Onkyo remote immediately & stopped using Pioneer's).

Recently, I popped in a disc and got the error "Wrong Region No."; the disc was immediately ejected. No discs would read after that; rentals, ones I own which I *know* worked fine a week earlier. CDs will play, but not DVDs. It's a Region 1 player, and only Region 1 discs were ever played, so Pioneer's best guess is bad firmware. I had to send it back: the jury is still out on whether it can be fixed.

I feel I must at least comment on Pioneer's customer service. I found it atrocious; I spent forever on hold, I was told they DO NOT provide ANY tech support (set-up help only), and I quickly tired of hearing "send it in and we'll look at it." No one had a clue what the Wrong Region No. error was; I finally had to speak to a supervisor. His answer was also "Send it back."

Meanwhile, when I tried to simply exchange it at Circuit City, I was told that it is no longer in production or being stocked, so tough luck: fix it or trash it.

While its being repaired, I bought the Sony DVPNS700D. A MUCH better unit, IMO. Better remote, smoother playback, better resolution & picture, great audio. Plus I've had no problems with CD-Rs (the Pioneer had mixed result), and it supports VCD as well. If the Pioneer comes back working, great; I'll have a spare. Lucky me.

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVPNS700D

price...from COSTCO anyway

depends on your tastes, for me too many to list

For those that haven't yet purchased but are considering this unit you must check out The Progressive DVD ShootOut II. Here is a quote from that review:

"This is a terrible, terrible progressive player (in our opinion). It's a perfect example of a product designed by marketing, trying to snag people who've heard that progressive players are better. In this case, that turns out to be untrue. It has no film mode at all, and it doesn't even have motion adaptive deinterlacing. An interlaced player would be a significant improvement over the DV-434 on almost any TV. Avoid this player!"

You can see this review and many more(these reviews are from the pros, not your average consumer)at: http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_8_3/dvd-benchmark-progressive-shootout-2-8-2001.html

This is a must read for those considering a prog scan DVD player. For those who own the unit, like myself, you won't want to read it. I'm waiting for the arrival of Mr RP91K

Picture Quality and Sound are excellent, Unit is quite and reliable.

30% of buttons on remote are hard to see, Unit is Flimsy about 6 pounds, A No frills unit

Home Theatre Magazine also believes that this unit is progressive. Dont know about the rest but my picture is a lot better in progressive mode. Line doubling the TV does not have nearly the effect that progressive has.

Similar Products Used:

Sony

The DV-434 was simply an upgrade from my Samsung DVD 709 player. Although Samsung gave me the oppurtunity to get my foot in the door with it's cheaper price, the system had some major flaws. The DV-434 proves that a little more cash can buy you better security, and options. Some cheaper DVD players (like my previous one) can't handle the information put out by a disc. This resolves in glitches in both audio, and video so bad that some movies can't even be watched! Pioneer, on the other hand has a system that's playing everything picture-perfect! I've even noticed a slight improvement in the Dolby Digital sent to my receiver. The setup options give a wide variety of choices to make the system meet your standards. Best of all- your setup is automatically set every time your system is turned on!

No major flaws, just a couple grunts. Pioneer is like Nike. The name alone could sell the system for a high price. Originally the system was about $350.00, but I got a discount. The price alone is a good debate. The player plays flawlessly, but all systems really should. The extras are an improvement, but not enough for the $150 leap from my Samsung player.
The remote is the biggest of the two complaints. Small, lots of buttons, and cluttered in patterns that hard to remember or even see in dim light. I wasn't too impressed by the fast foward. You have to hold the button down like a VCR, and tap the button twice when fast foward eventually locks in. It's pretty dissapointing that my Samsung could give me a controller ten times better than this one.

*Flawless player that handles all DVDs
*Audio playback is a slight improvement from cheaper models.
*Nice setup options.
*The high price may you feel a little empty.
*Awful controller design, and fast foward/rewind standards!

Similar Products Used:

Samsung DVD 709

Fair Picture, Plays Any disk I've thrown at it! VCD, CD-RW, etc.

Looks like a BestBuy Class DVD Player!

Well just go my Sony KP-61HS10 and wanted to see if I could improve its picture quality (That’s a pretty tall order, Sony’s 61” picture is darn near perfect). What a fine piece of equipment for the money. Well back to the point. I ran out and purchased the Pioneer DV-434 to test its picture quality from it's progressively scanned outputs. Boy was I disappointed!! I experienced all of the phenomena associated with an interlaced picture. How could that be? I saw vertical white lines jump wildly around the screen. I thought I was hallucinating. I kept switching the output between progressive and interlaced, and time and time again the interlaced picture was more stable! Sony’s DCR just does a better job that whatever technology Pioneer implements in its low-end progressive DVD players.

So, in the units defense the output in interlaced mode is beautiful and it plays every know format of CD’s. Build quality is mediocre at best. Some of its features seem to be handy. It will memorize things like, picture quality settings, language, subtitles, parental lock, etc. for each up to 15 of your most viewed DVD’s. It will resume playback from the point you left off even if you remove the DVD, nice stuff. I like the amber display; it matches all of my Denon amps and Lexicon DC-1 components. Remote control took a little getting used to but I think I like it. The unit supplies both Coax and TOSlink connections, which can be convenient.

I've not been able to test its 96Khz output, since my Lexicon DC-1 does not support it.

I can't decide if I’m going to keep it. My initial thoughts are that it's going back. I was looking for a player that would give me a better picture than my Sony 7700 or my even my old Panasonic player, but it just couldn’t cut it!

cb

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVP-S7700, Panasonic 310

Great Picture, great sound, and just the right amount of features...

Some popping when changing from 5.1 to PCM on some discs...

I really can't find a fault with this DVD player as hard as I might like. Yes, the construction could be better, but isn't bad. The front panel could be aluminum, but the layout is very good. The readout LCDs could be blue instead of orange (to match the rest of my SonyES equipment), but that's Pioneers color, they can be turned down or off (on this model) and hey this thing performs better at movie theatre sound, 96-bit audio sound, and sharp crisp (film-like) picture than any other DVD player I've seen.
Voices are VERY crisp and audible, bass is tight and refined. The progressive scan is a great plus too!

As an added bonus, this player plays CDRs, CDRWs, VCDs on CDR and CDRW, and SVCDs on CDRs and CDRWs (though undocumented). I really want to spend big bucks on the latest and greatest DVD player - but I don't have to (even at the $350 price I paid)!

Also, using my Sony RC2000 remote, I was able to program it with all the necessary commands from the 434's (newer and better) remote. So, I can't and won't complain! Boy, do I have alot of movies to rewatch better on this one - wow!

Similar Products Used:

Sony S7000, Sony S7700...

price, progressive scan, quick loading

OSD is functional but ugly, it is not as pretty as my Marantz

I bought this for use with my Sony VW10HT projector, then I heard all the reports on how it does not do progressive scan properly. I was concerned, even though until then I had thought the picture was great. I had looked at the Toshiba and I didn't see any real differences, although admittedly this was not a side by side comparison. So I played around some more with my Pioneer and I can say that in my setup, the progressive mode DOES look better than component or S-Video. Edges were smoother, no jaggies were present (on good transfers), and colors are better. (This is in contrast to some that say there is no improvement over interlaced). I tried looking at credits, which I read is a tough test. I saw some slight shimmer on small characters, but I'm not sure if it is the player or my wall texture (my screen has not yet arrived). I don't know how the Toshiba compared with credits. When I auditioned the Toshiba, I only looked at pictures, and it looked great also. I went with the Pioneer because it seemed to me to be similar performance for less money. Maybe a videophile would have seen differences that I couldn't.

Bottom line for me is that this is an improvement over interlaced inputs, but I don't know if it is as good as the Toshiba. I would have to do a side by side test. So far I am very happy with the Pioneer. My only complaints is the ugly OSD and the budget player appearance, but the price obviously was more important to me. I wouldn't call it an overpriced entry level player.

Similar Products Used:

Marantz DV4000, Toshiba 5109

Progressive Scan, fast, plays cd-r's cd-rw's.

Remte control.

I puchased this unit to use with my Pioneer HD710-Pro (whatever) monitor. I then read all the bad reviews.

I have a few comments. First of all Progressive does not mean it should have a line doubler or do 3/2 pulldown as some people insinuate. In fact Progressive scan means it should not have a line doubler.

Now to my review. I was skeptical based on the reviews and based on the price. However, i was plesantly surprised. The picture it producs in progressive mode when connected to my Pro-710 is almost as good as my HDTV reception (this might say something about the TV's ability o display HD signals, but that aside.)

The picture is awesome. The picture is also quite good interlaced, but the PRO-710 has an awesome line double and 3/2 pulldown itself. I think this looks better then te Toshiba 5109. I had bought one of those and returned it as I couldn't justify the price for the difference between it and my old Pioneer DV-525 and for the fact that it would not play my CD-R's and homemade VCD's.
Like the pioneer models.

Pioneer 434 gives a better picture the the Toshia with the PRO-710 and the DV-434 can also playCD-r's which the Tochiba 5109 can not.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer 525, Toshiba 5109.

Price

Lacks extra features, no dvd-audio(at this price yeah right), cd quality better on other players

I've had this for a few days. Have been reading all the comments on HTF and here.

I have a Hitachi 36SDX 88b which is a HiRes Digital TV (can't call it hdtv because it's not 16:9 and while it's capable of 1080i and 480p, it will only display around 810 line in 16:9 mode). It does the Anamorphic squeeze or enhancemant found on Sony XBR's. It's got progressive component inputs, and does have an internal line doubler (don't know if it employ's 3:2 pulldown--waiting to hear from Hitachi).

I own a Pioneer 414 as well which is an older interlaced dvd version. I can't say that it's much of a comparison, probably just as good as going from Interlaced to Progressive mode on the DV-434.

When I went to check the player out, I had them unpack it and hook it up to one of the new HD-ready Sony KV-32XBR400 that does 1080i and 480P (similar to mine). I brought Shakespeare in Love and the Fifth Element to test out. Initially, when I switched to Progressive mode, the picture on the Sony started flickering and became jaggy. I soon found a setting on the TV to set it to 16:9 enhanced, which I thought should happen automatically on these models (I don't remember if it was called that exactly, but whatever it was it stabalized the picture). There was a noticable difference bewtween interlaced and progressive. There were other people looking on and they loved the picture. However, there was also a guy there that does high-end HT installs that claimed he didn't really notice much difference (but he was a big LD fan--so his opinion doesn't count--j/k!). But there's been so much talk about this player not working with all TV's. I decided to take it home to test out on my Hitachi.

I threw in the Fifth Element, opening scenes and watched it in Interlaced mode trying to pay special attention to aliasing. When I switched to Progressive mode the signal went out for a second and then reappeared. The picture appeared a bit darker for some reason, so I stopped the player, thru in Video Essentials and recalibrated my TV with the 434 set to Progressive mode. I actually ended up having to change the brightness, contrast, and color.

Now calibrated, I went back to the Fifth Element, switching back and forth from interlaced to progressive, I noticed a differnce as would be expected. I was pleased, but I cannot say that all the aliasing and artifacts were gone. I threw in Shakespeare in Love, went to chapter 7, where it open with a pan across the courtyard. In interlaced mode, you could see the scan lines on edges. In progressive mode, almost all the lines were gone. The picture was the best I've seen on my TV.

So what conclusion do I draw from my limited test?

For all I know my Hitachi TV may have a bad internal line doubler. The Pioneer 434 may just be doing line doubling and not using 3:2 pulldown as others have indicated, which results in a superior picture in Progressive mode.

It may work better with some TV's than other's. This shouldn't be the case. Pioneer does warn about it, but it probably just refers to TV's that don't do Progressive scanning or just have an RGB input for progressive scanning.

The manual indicates 525p Progressive output. I know my TV can only handle 480p. I'm told anything above that would be converted to 1080i, but don't you need an HD decoder to do that conversion?

At any rate I think that it may be a good player for some, and terrible for others. At this point I am happy with the performance with my setup. I don't think this answers any questions about whether this is a "true progressive" (3:2 pulldown) player. I'd recommend it if you are looking for a value player, if your into high-end, well your probably not going to be satisified with this unit--even if it does 3:2.

I mean really...what do you expect for $300?


P.S. Popped in Santana-Abraxas-DTS and it sounded amazing, no question about the audio it rocks! (no hdcd, no dvd-audio)

Similar Products Used:

none except the Pioneer DV-414