Pioneer DVR-533H-S Slim Design DVD Recorder with 80 GB Hard Disk Drive

If you have satellite like I do (DirecTV), then forget about the TV Guide function...that only works with cable or antena. But I didn't care about the TV Guide.....what I wanted was a user-friendly recorder with a hard drive plus compatibility with dual-layer DVD media. The Pioneer 533H-S is perfect for what I wanted to do. I record football games onto the hard drive at the highest quality bit setting (HQ+), then edit the commercials, create chapters (all very easy to do), and then burn it onto a dual layer DVD at the same HQ bit rate. The burned copies are outstanding. As for editing, this machine tells you exactly how much time you have left after each commercial edit, so you always know exactly how much to trim off your hard drive recording to make sure it fits onto your DVD. Furthermore, creating chapters is simple. All editing and modifications you make to the original hard drive recording is successfully burned onto your DVD.

If you have satellite, then setup is easy. Select "cable" and let the built-in tuner go through the channels, just like a VCR. When the screen appears asking you if you want to configure TV Guide, select the option "never remind me again"....after that it will never be an issue. This unit acts just like a VCR.

All recordings, including timer recording, are straight forward. Once this unit is setup with satellite, you will manually record whatever channel your receiver is currently on....just hit the "record" button on the remote and that's it, or set the timer.

Quality recordings, easy and straight-forward to use. It does exactly what I want it to do, this is a sweet machine. I'm happy. I also called Pioneer tech support with questions about the TV Guide function, and they answered promptly, actually spoke perfect english and were helpful. I think they said the tech support is in California.

Also, this machine apparently lets you plug in your VCR so you can transfer your old tapes to the hard drive. Then you can edit the video and burn it to a DVD. I haven't tried this yet, but I have dozens of old VHS tapes of football games going all the way back to Super Bowl 23. Now I'll be able to archive my NFL library onto digital media that will last a century. How great is that?

I'm impressed with Pioneer.

Pros: Hard drive recording is quick and painless.

Built-in TV Guide is handy.

Intuitive menus.

Has a clock!

Cons: Relies too heavily on the TV Guide

Slow tuner

No previous channel button!!

I originally purchased the Panasonic EH50S, but returned it for two reasons:

1. It did not have a clock. Seems trivial, but the VCR it replaced had a clock and I found that I had grown very reliant on it.

2. No previous channel button. The Pioneer doesn't have one either... This is a HUGE omission. ANY device with a TV tuner needs to have this feature.

After replacing the Panasonic EH50S with the Pioneer, I realized that I should have purchased a DVD recorder with a hard drive right off the bat.

If you're upgrading from, or replacing a VCR, you'll be amazed at how enjoyable recording television can be with a hard drive. No tapes, and no worries about running out of space (unless you fail to do some occasional house cleaning of the shows your record).

Editing out the commercials from the shows/movies you want to save to DVDs is a simple process.

I mentioned that the TV Guide is a pro and a con. The downside with the Pioneer is that it uses the TV Guide system to set up it's tuner. In other words, if you want to delete a channel from the Pioneer, you have to delete it using the TV Guide. Very inconvenient and often flawed. I have two local stations that I don't want, but I cannot delete them because they don't show up in the TV Guide listing correctly.

The machine will also display the TV Guide screen when you turn it on. I don't need to see this every time I turn the machine on, so I find it annoying.

The TV Guide has been wrong twice so far. I noticed that it listed one movie, while the station was actually playing another. (Not Pioneers fault)

The tuner on the Pioneer is slow. My television and old VCR jump from channel to channel very quickly. With the 533H, there is a short delay. Apparently this is because it uses and analog tuner rather than digital. If so, they should have raised the price a bit and included the digital tuner.

The machine has begun to display the word "wait" on the screen when I turn it on. I am forced to wait about thirty seconds before it settles in and allows me to change channels. I'll have to do some research into this problem.

After a month of use, the positives outweigh the negatives, and hopefully Pioneer will fix some of the more trivial negatives with a firmware upgrade in the future.

If you're looking to replace a VCR, or just jump into the world of DVD recorders, the Pioneer 533H would be a great choice.

Buy Pioneer DVR-533H-S Slim Design DVD Recorder with 80 GB Hard Disk Drive Now

We gave up on TIVO and bought a Pioneer DVR-533. It is SO much easier to use than TIVO. Setup took only a short time and it was up and working. We've waited a full day to get TIVO back up and running after changing the setup! If you were considering TIVO or a stand-alone DVR (Digital Video Recorder) then definitely go with a stand-alone DVR like this Pioneer 533. It works just like a vcr and you DO NOT need the TV Guide to record programs. All you have to do is go to manual recording, set the date/time/frequency/etc and it is ready. And it works just like a vcr. I really like the preview aspect when looking at the recorded programs list, it shows the recorded program running in a small window. This lets you quickly see what was recorded. And it also will tell you how much record time each program took and how much time is left. That is something TIVO never did. There are so many more plusses to the Pioneer DVR-533 vs TIVO. The picture quality is better with the Pioneer and that will allow us to record probably double the time vs TIVO, both with 80gb hd's. The only negative is that the remote functions are not 100% intuitive but relatively easy to learn.

Overall we are very satisfied with this Pioneer DVR-533H and would recommend it to anyone.

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Of the DVRs that I have owned (2 so far) this DVR is not only the easiest to use but it is also fairly inexpensive compared to others. The menus and commands are straight forward and if you need help, the owner's manual is well laid out.

There is only one thing I didn't like about it the TV Guide function. If you have a satellite system, such as Dishnetwork, this function is useless. The timer recording is based on the TV Guide function, so I had to do a little digging into the owner's manual. It was fairly complicated but eventually I ended up using the satellite system to timer record, so it wasn't much of an issue.

Another small perk is when I record a program or movie the title of the program/movie is automatically shown on the thumbnail. I don't know how this works without the TV Guide feature but I never got a title on the recordings using my more expensive DVR.

I have owned a more expensive make and model of DVR and in comparison, this one is like a breath of fresh air. If I had to do it over again, I would definately save a lot of time and frustration and buy this one.

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This is the first DVR I've ever bought and I'm definitely glad I got a DVR unit with a hard drive instead of just a DVR. Although this unit has some impressive features, I do have some mixed feelings about it.

The main drawback is that it downloads TV Guide data very slowly and therefore the hard drive clatters away 20 hours a day, every day. I was so irritated with the incessant noise that I almost returned it. What's frustrating is that there's no way to deactivate the TV Guide feature so that you can eliminate the constant hard drive chatter (albeit requiring you to record all shows manually) a baffling omission. As I learned on the web, though, there's a workaround for this problem: input a fictitious Canadian Zip Code during setup and then always have the recording timer set. This eliminates the TV Guide feature so there's no more disk chatter -problem solved.

I do a lot of video editing and my main concern isn't features but picture quality. This DVR allows you to vary the video quality, and thus, recording capacity, over a very wide range. The highest quality setting is known as "XP+" which I use exclusively. With its 80GB capacity, the hard drive's capacity is about 11 hours at the XP+ setting. On a scale of 1 to 10, with VHS (SP) = 4, SVHS/Hi8 = 6, and the source video = 10, I'd give the XP+ quality an 8. There's little noise but a fair bit of digital noise reduction, even at the lowest NR setting. I wish this unit offered a higher video quality setting, even at the expense of a shorter recording capacity. Video copied from the HD to a DVD is a bit degraded from the original HD video, even at the highest quality setting. But not to be an alarmist, and to put it in perspective, if you think VHS, SVHS or Hi8 video quality is very good, then you'll think that the video quality of this unit is outstanding it's not perfect, but it's very close.

Two other minor quibbles: There's no apparent way to stop a timed recording that's in progress. Second, while I'm glad this unit has a firewire jack, allowing you to copy digital camcorder video to the HD, I wish the jack offered output as well as input. This would allow you to capture TV video through the unit to a computer hard drive, if desired, allowing a higher quality of video capture than what this unit offers.

It's a good unit and I'm glad I got it, but I'm looking forward to the next version with the suggested fixes above. With these caveats in mind, I'd recommend it.