Pioneer DVR-640H (160 GB) DVD Recorder / HDD Recorder

This is an awesome dvd recorder! It works very much like a regular VCR, which is exactly what I wanted. Thankfully Pioneer decided to do away with the TV Guide feature, which was supposed to be awful on the older models.

This unit is fast, quiet and easy to use. You can set timed recordings (one time, weekly, etc) fairly easily, despite the remote being poorly designed and menus that take some getting used to. Editing is easy (and kind of fun) and it has a great HDD organization layout (like a filing system using 'genres').

I have also copied HDD recordings onto DVDs and it's fast (10 mins!), quiet and easy! When you finalize your DVDs, you get to pick from several styles of DVD Main Menus. Cool! I am using DVD-R media (my other DVD player does not play DVD RW media, so I am limited to recording once onto DVDs if I want to watch my shows in another room). Looks great and plays well on my other DVD player.

DVD playback on this machine is like any other, but especially quiet, IMO.


Features I Like:

1. Chase Play - start watching something that hasn't finished recording yet.

2. Commercial Skip - 30 second interval skips to bypass commercials - awesome!.

3. Jukebox - dump CDs onto the harddrive. Some say this is useless because everyone has Ipods anyway, but I think it's neat.

4. Editing - You can set thumbnails, erase part of a show, split a recording into sections/chapters.

5. Recording Quality Selection - You can select several different recording speeds/quality for each recording and even when you copy to DVD. I've been using LP (so I can fit 4 hours onto a DVD later if need be) and it's almost as good as my regular digital TV signal. The LP mode on the 640 (and on a comparable Panny model, too) are very, very close to SP picture quality (not on hugs TVs, though, I don't think).


I have some disappointments:

1. No DV Input - so anyone that wants to transfer digital movies from their camcorder is out of luck. You can always use your av cables, though.

2. Title Name Problems for Recordings - when entering a title for each timed recording, the title is lost after the recording is finished. All it keeps is date/time/channel info! Title names have to be re-entered later - such a pain! This is a major flaw (and I would think a thing that could easily have been included). I am hoping for a firmware upgrade if enough people complain about it, but I am not holding my breath. TV shows you record through your cable/satellite box using one-touch record seem to allow the recorder to recognize the title of the movie/show from your box's guide (if that program

**UPDATE - 9/28/06**

On an av forum, I have been told that Pioneer is perhaps in the works for a firmware upgrade because the loss of title names for timed recordings is a known issue that lots of people are complaining about. We just all have to keep calling to log our complaints!


Although I have read a review on another site from a person that had two HDD failures after several weeks of use, I have been assured on a huge discussion on an AV forum that this is probably isolated. Everyone else I've chatted with is extremely happy with this unit and has had zero problems with it.

Remember it's important to keep these types of machines well-ventilated, because they overheat easily, and this threatens the life/longevity of the HDD. Perhaps this is why that person had two machines that had HDD failure.

I'll be pushing my 640 to the limits (Next week I am starting a big project: archive all my old VHS tapes), so I am hoping that all will go well and the unit will not crash and burn from overuse. Wish me luck!