Upscale to HDMI. Review on Pioneer DV 220KV K

There are some brands that I wouldn't mind betting my life upon, if it should ever come to that. Yamaha is one, Panasonic is another. But the instant Review is about a third. Pioneer ! Years ago when I was buying my plasma, I chanced to watch a Pioneer Kuro being demonstrated. Such was the picture quality that I daresay it stays unmatched even today.Needless to mention I was completely floored by the Kuro. The cheapest Kuro however, cost a cool Rs.2.5 lakh in those days and it was after much trepidation that I could finally settle for a comparatively modest Panny. I have always been impressed with Pioneers products, be it the Kuro or the music system in my car. The company though, hardly, if ever, showed any interest in selling its products in India. But let me not digress any further.

A few months ago, when my 4 year old DVD player began to show the usual signs of dying on me, I was compelled to consider a quick replacement. I was very satisfied with the Philips DVP3256, my Bedroom DVD player and so it was only natural that I would consider getting another Philips for my Living room too. I went to this shop and was almost done finalising the Philips DVP3388 when I caught a glance of a Pioneer tucked away in the corner. On closer inspection it turned out to be the Pioneer DV-220. Absolutely delighted to find a Pioneer DVD player being retailed in India, I immediately asked for a Demo even though I knew it wasnt necessary. The rest was quite predictable...

When I brought it home and unpacked, the first thing that impressed me was its weight. Hardly more than 1-1.5 kgs. Size was smaller too. The player came with an HDMI cable(5-700 to yahin wasool ho gaye!) in addition to the usual composite cable. Next I was equally impressed with the disc tray. Unlike most other players today, it is quite thick and therefore more resistant to misalignment, breakages and other disc load problems. There is even an analogue volume knob for the comfort of the user.

But the real strength of the player lies elsewhere. The DV-220 plays almost all kinds of CDs/DVDs including the headache prone DVD+R/+RW. It also plays all formats of files including DIVX (well almost all, except exotic ones like .mkv), supports USB playback and upscales to HDMI.

The playback itself far exceeded my expectations. The usual DVDs were handled with ease and the colors rendered were most natural as against many other similar players. The best part is the player offers a lot of scope for customisation, both in picture and sound.

The real fun began when I started playing low fidelity movies downloaded from the Net (those typical 700 mb files packing in movies of 2 hrs duration). For the uninitiated, HDMI upscaling is like improving the picture quality of low-fidelity content to make it look like hi-fidelity content, thus resulting in sharper pictures and reduced motion blur. Of course you'd need a HDMI enabled player and an HD TV to be able to utilise this feature. The player read those files fast and upscaling was really outstanding (refer picture of a 340 mb avi file of 50 min duration showing one Mr Sherlock Holmes in all his glory) . I felt like I was watching a DVD. And DVDs felt like Blue Ray :-P

Not only is resuming Playback possible in DVDs (like other players), with the DV-220 its also possible with DIVX files and in USB mode. Further, in an era where getting a Multi-region disc player is a mission in itself, I was lucky enough to get a Region free player. However, I'm told this was an aberration and doesnt usually happen.

The USB player is again a revelation. Not only does the player recognise/read USB content faster than most of its peers, it has very little trouble even with large flash drives. For instance I connected my 60 GB iPod with 7-8 movies loaded and there was never a hitch in playback.

This said, the player is not without its drawbacks, most of them so preposterous that you'd feel like banging your head.

Perhaps the biggest irritant is the red coloured LED indicator. It is small and the font is smaller, making it very difficult to read even from a distance of 5-6 feet. While watching movies its extremely difficult to keep a tab of the counter. As if this was not enough the interface downright embarrassing. TITLE is shown as 'titLE' and and GUI as '6UI' !! I felt like I had bought a cheap Chinese rip off.

The scroll wheel cant be used to fast forward/rewind. There are dedicated keys for that. Again the max FF Speed in USB mode is 3 which is marginally slow compared to my Philips :-(

Thirdly, the batteries in the remote are kept one on top of the other instead of the usual practice of keeping 'em side by side. They arent held together properly resulting in the cluttering noises even at the smallest of shakes.

The player doesnt have a 5.1 output, although you wouldnt exactly expect it out of a similarly priced player.

The DV-220 cost me Rs.3.8K, a touch expensive compared to the Philips at 3.6K but easily more than worth the extra buck. DV-120, its sibling, is available for a price of Rs.2.9K and has almost the same feature set except that it lacks the HDMI interface and so obviously the upscaling too.

Lastly I'm very happy to see Pioneer making these DVD Players available in India. And at affordable prices too. Hope this is a sign of things to come, even though I know they'll never be able to offer the now discontinued Kuro range in India :-(