Bought a Pioneer DV-563A-S

stewey

Active Member
I read a lot of reviews on this unit and the concensus was that it performs way above it's price-point. I was seriously considering a DVI player, but there's only two on the market right now and they have mixed reviews. Not to mention this unit offers SACD and DVD-A support which is a major plus - if only for the sake of playing around.

I haven't tried it out yet, but I'll post my impressions after I test it with a couple of DVD's.

cya, Stew.
 
First Impressions...

Fairly cheap feel compared to the Sony dvd player it's replacing (DVP-NS300). This is just in terms of fit and finish. The remote is pretty light and flimsy, as are the buttons on the front face. Oh well, I imagine they had to skimp somewhere to fit all these features into such a low-priced unit. No biggie as I have a nice universal remote anyway.

Much quieter operation than the Sony. Menus seem more responsive and loading times are definitely reduced. It seems faster at skipping all that crap at the beginning of movies that the old Sony got stuck on. Compatibility is a big issue for me, and this player seems happy with these new disks Blockbuster is putting out. Very cool setup menu's that work while the DVD is playing and allow you to adjust the picture before it even reaches your set. The splash image is pretty funny though, just a big bright PINK "Pioneer" on a black background. Weird.

As for picture quality, it's like apples and oranges. I thought the PQ was good before, but damn! Progressive Scan is nice! At first it sucked, and then I realized it was off by default. Ooops! I don't have another progressive scan player to compare against, so it's not really a fair match up, but who cares. I have the Sharpness nearly all the way up and there are no perceptible artifacts. It's glorious! I have noticed a few scenes where things look over-saturated, but I hope to clear that up with a little tweaking. I played around with 'Die Another Day', 'Blue Crush' (don't laugh), and 'Hope Springs', (some movie we'd rented). There's a close-up scene in Blue Crush where you can now make out the individual pores in Kate Bosworth's face. Wow.

I look forward to testing out the SACD and DVD-A support, but that'll have to wait until I get a new AVR and a disk or two.

cya, Stew.
 
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