Page 1 of Is the Pioneer DV-444 the machine to buy?

Hardware Forum

Is the Pioneer DV-444 the machine to buy?

nak99 (Mostly Harmless) posted this on Tuesday, 29th January 2002, 22:04

Hi,

Been on this site looking for a new machine to buy. Thought I had found it in the form of the DV-444K, but after reading a few threads on here, I see that some have had problems?

I want a reliable machine that is region free, plays VCDs and MP3s and can read all types of CD. Macro free would be awfully nice.

Is this the one??

Cheers

Neil

RE: Is the Pioneer DV-444 the machine to buy?

Sarmad (Mostly Harmless) posted this on Wednesday, 30th January 2002, 13:35

I have this machine, and am very happy with it so far. I bought mine from www.techtronics.com and they made it multi-region and macrovision disabled. All for £199 including VAT, delivery and all the adjustments!

What doubts did you read about in this player, because I could find any mentioned on this site? I will be interested to know.

RE: Is the Pioneer DV-444 the machine to buy?

jono_h (Mostly Harmless) posted this on Wednesday, 30th January 2002, 15:51

Got my 444 last week from HomeCinemaHeaven, there`s a slight pasue on layer changes on occasion, but I can`t really fault it.

Very happy with the HCH mod as well - Macro free, auto & manual region changing. If you manually set the region to 1, then it auto selects region as necessary, but defaults to reg 1, playin RCE discs happily.

RE: Is the Pioneer DV-444 the machine to buy?

rob manasseh (Harmless) posted this on Wednesday, 30th January 2002, 17:15

ordered mine saturday morning , it arrived tuesday morning. plays multi-region auto /manual , macro-free, rce, mp3 cd-r/rw dvd-r/rw. exellent picture ,brilliant sound, prompt service ,DVD-MAGIC.CO.UK , £209 INC next-day delivery cant really get any better than that , can you?

RE: Is the Pioneer DV-444 the machine to buy?

shedaisy (Mostly Harmless) posted this on Wednesday, 30th January 2002, 19:53

I would definetly recommend pioneer. I got the 545 multi region (decided to pay extra £50 to get this model instead of 444) last august from linkonline and am very happy with it. Looks fab and plays everything.

RE: Is the Pioneer DV-444 the machine to buy?

Paul Franco (Competent) posted this on Thursday, 31st January 2002, 08:14

A friend of mine has one and it keeps sticking. Also, he was a bit fed up because the CD quality was not as good as his previous budget CD player so he`s effectively downgraded.

RE: Is the Pioneer DV-444 the machine to buy?

nak99 (Mostly Harmless) posted this on Thursday, 31st January 2002, 09:49

Search all forums for 444

You will see that someone had a problem backing up a NTSC dvd to tape.

From what research I have done...... this seems to be because the DV-444K player outputs in PAL 60 mode which UK VCRs don`t like.

The signal will need to be converted to real PAL.

Don`t really know what that all means but I got the info from the Techtronics site.....(excellent site BTW)

Don`t actually think I am going to want to copy R1 disks, but I don`t really like the thought that I never would be able to.

Cheers

Neil

RE: Worrying.......

AndyPandy (Competent) posted this on Thursday, 31st January 2002, 12:01

your previous statements are a bit worrying...
"From what research I have done...... this seems to be because the DV-444K player outputs in PAL 60 mode which UK VCRs don`t like.
.....The signal will need to be converted to real PAL".

Does the above mean when we are watching a VCR on our TV it is not `real PAL` or is the TV converting it into `real PAL` or is the VCR player converting it to `real PAL` from a `PAL 60`

RE: Worrying.......

nak99 (Mostly Harmless) posted this on Friday, 1st February 2002, 09:26

No my understanding is that it appears most dvd players output pal 60. Most modern european tv`s can take pal 60 or real pal (which I think is called pal 50)

If your tv wasn`t a modern one, the R1 disks would come out b/w....

So there is not a problem watching R1 dvds on most tvs. The problem appears when you sending an R1 dvd signal to a uk video player.
To get around this I think you have to buy a converter or something.

As I said, I am far from an expert on this subject. Check out the Techtronics site for the expert opinion.

Cheers

RE: Is the Pioneer DV-444 the machine to buy?

AndyR (Mostly Harmless) posted this on Monday, 4th February 2002, 11:00

Had mine for a couple of months now - not tried any R1 disks yet, but the only problems I`ve come across are:
(i) Noticeable pause at layer change
(ii) Sound output level a bit low compared to VCR, TV
(iii) Doesn`t like fingerprints on the disk (skips/ejects disk etc)

Picture quality is consistently excellent though..

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