Digital Trends

Pioneer 505HD

March 8th, 2003 | by Ian Vanhoof

The Installation

The screen can be wall mounted or it can stand on a tabletop. Let me warn you now though both of these mounting kits are sold separately. The price of these accessories depends on what dealer you go to. Keep in mind though that you must choose one of the mounts. Wall or table; because there is no other way to stand it up. If you do not buy one or the other, your only recourse is to lay it up against the wall. It is not recommended you build it inside a wall because of the heat generated by this thing. If you decide to get the wall mount have a friend with you. The screen itself is a heavy 94 pounds. That means you must mount directly to the stud or it will rip your wall down. 

The Hookup

Installation of all my gear was a snap. As you can see in the picture our normal setup includes a presentation laptop, and for sound, a Bose home theater system. The black box underneath allows us to pipe in both video and sound from our digital studio next door. As discussed in the input section, all the inputs are located on the bottom of the screen. It is very easy to hook up video and/or audio cables to the 505hd.

Inputs

Let's talk inputs. The 505HP has 4 input panels. The input 1 panel has your standard Composite video input and an S-Video input. These can be used to hookup any standard video equipment. This includes a DVD Player, VCR, Cable box, DV Deck, VHS Deck, Beta Deck, Playstation 2, etc... The S-Video port can handle Video Cameras, some laptops, plus a variety of other specialized equipment.

Input 2 is comprised of your standard Yellow/Red/White dedicated component input. As you may know if you have ever hooked up ANY home theater, these ports will do you just fine if you want to hook up the satellite system plus the surround system to this gem of a screen.

Input 3 is a collection of BNC connectors used to hook equipment that uses RGB Component jacks. These can include computers, high end DVD players, a Variety of Video Decks. This input set is usually known as YRB. For those of you in the business; you know what I am talking about.

Input 4 is a standard D-Sub connector. This is used to hook a desktop computer or laptop to the screen using a standard D-sub connector (a.k.a. a monitor cable). 

Have you noticed that this screen is lacking DVI connectors; yes, you are a very astute reader. NO the pioneer does not have a DVI input, but once you hook up your computer to the 505hd (using the D-Sub connection); you will not be sweating this fact anymore. We have a computer hooked up to this 24 hours a day. Our primary use of this screen is for the presentation and selling of our product, which happens to be high-end video, 3D animation, and multimedia. It is the best computer screen I have ever seen. Crisp detail, no dither, fast DV, and tight fast video game play makes me love this screen.

The operations panel is located on the right hand side of the screen. You use this panel to access the menu selections as well as change inputs on the fly.