Pioneer Elite PRO-700HD 64 in. TV

Note, some fraction of this review was cribbed from my Pioneer 700HD review and the edited/updated.

I was looking for the best picture in a new HDTV rear projection. I compared the Panasonic, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Phillips, and Pioneer first-generation HDTV-capable rear-projection monitors. I did not look at front projection or the $35K Runco (which is supposed to be very good). I found the picture on the Pioneer to be significantly better than the other competitors when viewing DVDs.

None of the RPTVs offered came with a built-in HDTV over-the-air (OTA) tuner. All supported some form of input for an external tuner.

The Pioneer supports 480p (p=progressive) and 1080i (i=interlaced) output displays. All input formats are converted to one of those two. In the case of NTSC/480i, it is upconverted using an internal line doubler. The Pioneer supports two component inputs as well as a slot for an "internal" tuner. In June last year, I borrowed Pioneer's external tuner for two weeks and watched the 5 Bay Area channels that were putting out some form of digital TV signal. During that time, the only true 1080i content I saw was the Jay Leno show on KRON-TV (NBC). While the resolution was spectacular and so much better than line-doubled NTSC NBC output, it was, in the end, still Jay Leno, so... I returned the $2500 tuner and am waiting for the right time to buy something else. Other channels were either sending out 480p versions of their normal 480i content or 1080i upsampled. Both looked noticeably better than the analog versions. Also, the Pioneer tuner was definitely a beta/1stGen device: it locked up a few times and in one case couldn't deal with a channel number remapping that KRON did and would permanently stick on KRON.

[ Update - I have purchased an RCA DTC-100 and am using only the OTA tuner portion (I'm not sure if I want to keep it so I haven't signed up for satellite). CBS is doing incredible things with HDTV. I don't particularly care about golf, but ended up watching at least two hours of the Masters last weekend (4/8/2000) because it was in HDTV and was gorgeous. Closeups of the players and of the grass were incredibly detailed. Gallery shots allowed you to pick out individual people in crowds of hundreds. Shots of the trees swaying in the wind on Saturday showed detail I've never seen, even in the movie theatre). Continuing in the thread of watching things I don't care about, CBS's mini-series "Falcone" is another Donnie Brasco deriviative trying to capture the Soprano's magic (I assume). The show isn't bad, but I've watched at least 4 of the episodes solely because its in HDTV. Some of CBS's programming isn't bad... it's the first primetime network I've watched since I gave up on the X-files late season ]

The big improvement of the 710HD over the 700HD is the de-interlacer. The 700HD's actually had a design defect that added noise to solid parts of the picture. It also didn't do 3-2 pulldown (24fps->60i conversion) correctly and fast-moving horizontal red edges could end up looking really ugly (IMAX Super Speedway was my reference for this problem).
The 710HD's de-interlacer ("PureCinema") seems perfect. All prior artifacts are gone, "A Bug's Life" is gorgeous. It has an adjustment with three settings: none, mid, HQ. I don't know what mid/HQ mean, but none allows you to turn it off and see the difference (and it is striking).

The other improvement in the 710HD is the 64 point convergence vs. 9 points on the 700HD. OTOH, so far, my 710HD seems to need more convergence work than my 700HD ever did. We shall see on this one.

The 710HD has a 16x9 aspect ratio and nearly all TV content is still 4x3. There are 5 different ways of reconciling this:
* 4x3 mode - you get grey bars on the left/right... ugly in most cases
* Cinema wide - it stretches the picture out and clips the top and bottom, used for viewing old-style analog letterboxed content
* Zoom - it crops the top and bottom by zooming in
* Full - a direct mapping of the 4x3 input to 16x9. This is what all of the anamorphic letterbox modes on DVD players put out to give you the best picture.
* Natural wide - a very good compromise that I use for all standard TV viewing, very few people have noticed the stretching that occurs in this mode.


The Pioneer has many whizzy features like dual-tuners that allow simultaneous viewing (single sound source) from two cable/OTA signals. In addition there are 3 and 9 channel preview modes that let one tuner surf on half the screen while you watch the other half.

The Pioneer has 4 video inputs, 2 are component/Svideo/composite and 2 are Svideo/composite. I have more devices hooked up to my system than my receiver can support and the Pioneer has a cool feature where you can hook multiple video inputs to the same item and it will pick the highest quality one currently active. So, I have my Nintendo (composite) hooked up to the same input as the DVD player (component) and when the DVD is off, the Nintendo is visible, effectively giving me a few more video inputs. The 710HD adds a D-sub connector to allow RGB-input. You can't hook up a standard PC video output, but the message boards say that a Matrox G400 can do 1080i well, while a GeForce is considered the reference for 480p DVD playback.

The remote control seems fine, but I don't use it because I immediately loaded its commands into my Pronto remote. The sound system is probably OK, but I haven't used the sound from a TV in many years, so I have no real comment.

As of 3/2000, there are few choices for HDTV input. If you buy a $1500-$2500 tuner, you can watch OTA signals in your area. Right now, CBS is doing the most with HDTV content, filming many of their primetime shows in 1080i. ABC has Monday Night Football in HD, and NBC has Jay Leno. HBO has an HD version of their channel. It is being broadcast on Dish and DirectTV satellite and is "free" if you already subscribe to an HBO package on those services. Some of HBOs movies are actaul 1080i transfers, while others are just upsampled DVD-quality. Showtime is also broadcasting in HD and is treated the same way (free if you subscribe to the regular version) but it is only available on Dish right now. You can buy a Panasonic VCR ($999) that allows you to digitally record/playback OTA signals if you have their tuner. For the most part, cable companies are staying out of the HD arena until they can decide how to broadcast the channels and in what format: 8VSB, same as OTA, or QAM, the digital cable standard.

Currently most HDTVs have component inputs that are YCbCr. The Mitsubishi supported RGB only. Most front-projection screens support both. The momentum is not yet clear, but the first DirectTV receiver from RCA (DTC-100) supports only RGB/VGA. 2nd generation Mitsubishi TVs supports both and all 2nd generation Pioneer support both as well. DirecTV/OTA receivers from Hughes, Toshiba, and Mitsubishi will output both as well but are still not available (why?). This is probably the only risk of incompatibility, and converters will come out for the losing interface.
[ Update: Audio Authority has built a $129 RGB->component converter, so even YCbCr-only sets can use the RCA DTC-100 ]

IMHO, to decide when to buy an HDTV is now merely a question of when you are ready for a new TV. You can buy any of today's 1st or 2nd generation monitors and know that there will be some external tuner that gives you HDTV signals in the future. I would not buy an integrated solution for at least 2 or 3 more years. The quality of picture on the new sets (all of them) is so far above prior 480i/NTSC TVs that upgrading will give you an immediate improvement.