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

I've owned a VCR of some brand or another for at least 20 years. I've always used it to record shows that I cannot watch live or don't want to. After all, isn't it more time wise to watch a 22 or 44 minute show in 22 or 44 minutes rather than 30 or 60? Sure, I bought some movies on VHS, but for the most part, the machine was used for recording. After having children, I had to rely on recording shows even more to watch after the kids went to bed. This led to two VCRs to record all the shows for me, my wife, or both of us.

This inevitable led to situations where we would have to wait while something finished recording or switch tapes between VCRs during commercials (which then leads to the awful fact that recording from one VCR do not always look or sound very good in another VCR!). To top those troubles off, my faithful RCA VCR died a few years ago. This VCR was built well and could play any recording well. Since it died, I had been in VCR hell. I tried a few models, mostly cheap since I planned back then on the future of DVRs. Long story short, I never found one that not only recorded and played well, but did not squeak or do various other annoying things.

As the thoughts of the upcoming fall TV season floated in my head with visions of sitcoms, dramas, and sports...I finally decided to buy some brand of DVR. I have a cable box and did not want to mess with IR Blasters and guide programming. Basically I wanted a *digital* VCR. A machine that recorded digitally but was set up and used like a VCR. I researched a lot and ruled out TiVo and Replay boxes. I also wanted to rule out guide type programming and machines without built in tuners. I wanted a big hard drive and DVD recording as well.

Then I read about the Pioneer DVR-640H-S. It seemed too good to be true. It had just been released the beginning of June when I was doing my searching. I liked Pioneer already since that was my current brand of DVD player. The price was obviously not cheap, but not oppressive. It has a tuner, 160 GB hard drive, multi format DVD recorder, and no built in programming guide. Apparently previous Pioneer DVRs had some issues with the guides, so they did away with it for this model.

This is the perfect machine for someone like me who wanted to replace a VCR to record shows and sports. And it has a lot of features that I either have already ended up using or plan to in the future.

Recording to the hard drive is awesome and it has many different recording qualities. So far, I have tried the top three qualities, and even the lowest of the three I tried is so crystal clear. I recorded a lot of Wimbledon tennis at that quality level (LP I believe) and it was amazing compared to the best quality from my old VCR. It has four fast forward speeds as well as a search feature where you can enter the time code you want to go to.

The timer recordings works just like a VCR...channel, length, quality, time, date, one day/daily/weekly, etc. You can put a name on the scheduled recording, but it is a bit of a waste of time since that name does not transfer with the recording. You have to re-enter it once the recording is made and stored on the drive. (*UPDATE - There is a firmware upgrade available as of May 2007 that fixes the title issue. Installing the 6.20 firmware is very easy to do and once it is done, the unit will pull in the title of the program automatically when it is recorded, if the title is embedded in the signal. Also, if you enter the title beforehand, it will keep it now so you would not have to re-enter it. So with this fix, I think I can say that this machine is pretty much *perfect* now, and it was pretty close before!) Nice if you plan on keeping it on there for a while amongst other recordings. I have the basic coax line from my cable going into the Pioneer so If I want to tape something that is not basic cable, but needs to the box, I hooked the box up to the video inputs on the Pioneer. So I can just put the box on the channel I want to record and put the Pioneer on the Input channel. I have used the Chase feature a lot so far as well. I have been recording a day of tennis and came home at lunch and been able to just press play. It starts from the beginning of the recording and plays while it records the rest of the timed recording. Very cool. Plus it remembers where you stopped watching each recording and starts at that spot next time.

I have not used the DVD to burn anything yet. (*UPDATE - I have since used the machine to burn recorded content to a DVD. It worked flawlessly. You can enter chapter points in the recording. Then you create the menu simply by choosing from the small collection of styles it has and let it burn. Once the DVD is finalized which takes a few minutes, you are good to go on most DVD players.) The only thing I have used the DVD player for is to watch a CD-R that I put some DIVX shows on. One of the features of this machine is being able to play DIVX video files. This is a newer kind of compression for video files that are on computers. I have a lot of TV shows in DIVX format so it is cool to be able to just save those files to a data CD-R and watch them on the TV. No video software or menus or encoding needed. The only bad part about this is that as far as I have been able to determine, the DIVX files can only be saved to a CD-R, not a DVD. You cannot fit much video on a CD-R. Maybe a handful of DIVX encoded half hour TV shows.

Let's see, so far those features are the ones I am familiar with through actually using. Other cool things that I have not used yet is the USB port to view photos from a camera or card reader, the jukebox that allows you to rip music from your CDs and store it on the hard drive to have a huge library of digital music ready to go, video editing, and copying & backup.

Just FYI, I have my Pioneer hooked up to a system that includes TV, digital cable box, receiver, DVD player, CD player, Playstation 2, and VCR. I use the S-Video for video and the coaxial digital for audio. It looks and sounds great. It has three input channels which is nice. I use one of the rear ones for my cable box, the other rear one for my VCR, and the front one can be used for a video camera, game system, camera, whatever.

I cannot recommend this machine enough. If you've only ever had VCRs and want something better, this thing is it. If you record a lot of TV to watch later and you are sick of saying "I *taped* it and feeling old, this machine will make you want to cry with joy! Enjoy!

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that it is as quiet as a mouse. I read that some DVRs can be loud whether it is the fan or the sound of data being written to the hard drive. Pretty much the only sound that comes from this baby is the little beep when you turn it on and off. And the styling is pretty sweet, too. It is a pretty and slick looking piece of hardware. Silver and black will blend whether you have mostly black components, mostly silver, or a mix.