Digital Trends

Pioneer DVR-633H-S

September 19th, 2005 | by Douglas MacLean

Functions

Hard Drive Recording
The 160 Meg hard drive can be used for recording in several different modes.  As most out there know, there is a trade-off between storage space and quality.

Recording Modes:
XP+ HDD recording mode
XP Highest quality, about one hour on a DVD
SP Standard play (default mode), about two hours on a DVD
LP Long play, four hours on DVD
EP Extended play, six hours on DVD
SLP Super long play, about eight hours on DVD
SEP Super Extended Play, about ten hours on DVD

The highest modes will work best for programs that you want to save for posterity and burn to a DVD.  The middle modes like SP and LP were fine for time, shifting a television program for later viewing.  Modes at and below EP demonstrated an annoying amount of graining and loss of detail.  An hour-long program in the lowest (SEP) mode took about 35 seconds to burn to DVD, but the results where far from optimal.  It was better to take a little more time with transferring to DVD and use the highest mode.  Older black and white movies were fine with the SP mode, while most material with higher end audio like Dolby 5.1 were only acceptable with the XP or XP+ modes.  There is an auto mode available that will use the fastest bit rate possible for the space remaining on the hard drive.  At the highest bit rate, there is room for about 23 hours of recording on the hard drive.  Considering you can burn a DVD-RW along the way, this should be enough for anyone except those who watch television all day long.

Pioneer also provides a means to transfer non-copy protected content (such as your personal home movies) from the DVD to the hard drive, where you can transfer them to a computer for editing and re-burning.  You can use this to add family commentaries to the DVDs of your family vacations.

Another great feature here is the ability to double your DVD recording with the use of dual layer discs.  Please note that DVD+R discs are not compatible with this unit; version 3.0 DVD-R discs are required.  The optimal speed for dual layer recording is the 2X or 4X modes. 

The typical features such as being able to pause, rewind, fast forward, etc. while still recording are present. 

Copy protection is in the form of CPRM, Content Protection for Recordable Media.  This allows the recording of special copy once broadcast.  This is a new restriction that permits the user to only make one copy of program for personal use.  Recordings made with this restriction can only be played on the recorder that made them. 

One of the nicest features presented is the online help function.  At almost any point in a process such as recording, you can activate help and get some informative screens describing exactly what to do next.  The instructions provided were typically clear and easy to follow.  Useful information such as space remaining on the drive is also available through this function. 

While many similar units require a paid subscription to a programming guide service, Pioneer includes the TV Guide Interactive Programming guide.  This provides a nice graphic interface to select programming up to eight days in advance.  Since this function requires the G-Link previously found to be so touchy to use, I found it better to do most of the selection through my cable box. 

Playback Options
This unit was able to handle just about every format I could throw at it.  It was able to handle WMF, MPG3 and JPG files nicely, including a navigation menu with little thumbnails of the material.  It was also able to read DVD-RW and DVD-R discs created on a computer.  DVD+RW and DVD+R were not supported.

Dolby 5.1 and DTS audio outputs are provided and worked well with my home theater receiver.  Overall, the playback was very clear and provided excellent results.