Pioneer DV-350

Great value for money, and would recommend the DV-350 to my friends. Its got a great standard of images and sounds. I cant think of any bad points as mine did everything i wanted it to

I spent a good few months researching and physically seeing many DVD players. Looking for something inexpensive (don't want to invest a lot in something that may be outdated in 2-3 years due to fast rate of technology change), yet needs to be of good quality in the meantime. To cut a long story short, ended up buying the Pioneer 350 multizone version over Christmas. Tested various the following DVDs via a Sony TV, the most recent being:-

1. Lord of the Rings

2. Harry Potter

3. Spiderman

4. Jethro Tull

Some brief feedback of what I experienced, Film #1: the original 3 hour film on one DVD produced some occasional and slight blocks instead of a fine, gradient sky, for example. I thought that was the DVD player but realised this is down to quality of decoding / compression used. How? Well, the next version of this film, 3 1/2 hours long over 2 DVDs does not suffer from this, so they were trying to cram in too much information in to on to one disc, compressed it and lowered the quality in my opinion.

Both other films, excellent quality, especially Spiderman ' flying' scenes. No degradation. Jethro, well, superb audio quality. All of them change layer without me noticing a thing, except ever so slight on just one occasion. Then tried my music CDs on the 350, outputted to my pretty decent audio hi-fi amplifier's CD input (as opposed to DVD). Made me very quickly retire my Marantz CD component, the Pioneer was that much more precise in details and actually controls a previously 'wallowing'and soft bass I got through the Marantz. Very surprising turn of events, but the difference is clearly there on my system / room's acoustics. So I hope to give it some heavy use over the next 2-3 years, and then it will be the next progressive, DVD-A, blah, blah, that will be the thing to buy then, perhaps a descendant of my excellent little Pioneer 350 ?

(and no, I don't work for Pioneer, don't know anyone who does, never bought anything from them before, but many years ago acquired some old budget speakers from someone, and was not especially impressed but were ' OK')

Broke down after only one month's moderate play.

A GREAT ALL ROUND MACHINE THAT WILL PLEASE ALL THAT INVEST. WITH A GREAT SLIMLINE DESIGN IT WILL BLEND INTO ANY SILVER SYSTEM OR SETUP ALREADY INPLACE. ( PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT ITS ONLY BAD POINT )

I just got this unit as a region free player (normally these come to Greece as region 2 locked) for 300Eu which for the local market is a bargain price.

I've hooked it up with a Sony AV rec/amp (STR DE 485) and a set of AIWA 5.1 speakers and it sounded great using the AV connectors (will get the digital cable soon) in the surround modes.

Until now I have tried it with

CDR MP'3,

CDRW MP'3, both closed and open disks and these work ok - It does not like multisession MP'3 CD's though - only reads the first session (interesting aside: when a different recording session is activated via software it still reads the first one - might have something to do with physical track placement on the CD I guess !)

Commercial and recorded audio CD's,

DVD's from regions 1,2,4 ,

VCD's and SVCD's, some old originals + ripped stuff on SVCD format

No problems whatsoever.

I am also quite fond of the menu/on screen navigation system.

Heard from a friend that it is possible to copy a DVD that is playing to a VHS tape if the video connections to the AV amp are active from both ends. Havent tried this myself yet though.

Sorry for the length of the post but I thought it might be of interest to a few people.

Cheers

I bought this player for 3 reasons.

1. To play a couple of DVDs that were incompatible with my 18 month Toshiba.

2. To be able to play Region 1 DVDs.

3. To be able to play DVD-Rs.

Now, on everything bar points 1, and the speed of reading standard manufactured discs I would consider my old Toshiba to be a far superior model.

It was much better constructed, had an optical digital out for connecting to my speakers and was much simpler to set up and use.

The machine specified it would play DVD-Rs, and as I had a Pioneer DVD-RW drive in my computer I assumed a Pioneer player would have the best compatibility with the discs that I burned.

The discs that I burned rarely loaded and when the machine eventually loaded one it would not read the data at the edge of the disc very well. I have since tried the exact same disc in my friend's Toshiba SD110 and the discs play back with no problems at all. And that machine does not state DVD-R compatibility.

Now this would not be an issue except on both Amazon (where I bought the machine) and on the Pioneer website the product specifications stated clearly it had DVD-R compatibility.

My only other criticism is the poor quality remote control. Whilst laid out well with easily recognisable buttons it looks and feels cheap.

Despite these issues the machine is otherwise a good machine and is generally good value for money. I am just a little bit annoyed to have to send it back to Amazon and get a player which can play the DVD-Rs as I have already sold my old Toshiba.

The dv350 is a great piece of kit. The first dvd player i had was a Pioneer over 4 years ago. I sold this to a friend and it is still going strong and playing ALL dvds, even RCEs, which his Sony F-11 did not!

Next in line was a Sony DAV-S300 as i wanted full 5.1 in a sleek little all-in-one unit.

However, the Sony lacked power and i decided to go the whole hog on the home cinema front - I am a film production undergraduate.

I therefore, bought a good reciever - Sony STR-DB940, a good tele Sony KV-32FX60 etc.

The one thing lacking however, was a quality dvd player, the ideal parter being the Arcam DV88.

However, this is £1000 and though i have had the money for it three times, there have always been more important things and it has been put off - Rent, bills etc!

So all this time i have been using an old grunding player that i bought for my girlfriend years ago - she now has my old Sony DAV-S300.

The cables in the back of this machine almost cost more!! - A reference coaxial interconnect from QED and the limited edition QED Sqart, both costing around £60 each.

So, my point (EVENTUALLY!) is that this is to finally replace the crusty old grundig which has been the weak link in my £5000 system for too long with this stunning Pioneer model.

This is a step up until i get the Arcam, if i ever get the money to spare.

Basically, all you need to know about the player is the rating and the details in the GOOD POINTS section.

Picture quality is as good as the pioneer i had years ago, sound through my reference cables to the reciever is first rate with a fast attack and finally a good dvd player that plays all video types and mp3s.

For a dvd player, i wouldn't go for anything except Pioneer (unless i had a grand for an Arcam), just like i would never buy a vcr that wasn't made by JVC. Quite simply because, they are the best!

If you buy this machine, you will not be disappointed - hopefully throughout this review-come-mini-saga you have learnt that i obviously know about the technology and can therefore be trusted when i say something is GOOD.

Thanks for reading (",)

An elegant and stylish piece of kit, the Pioneer DVD 350 is a snip at the price. It comes with a range of functions which would normally put it into a much higher price bracket and once you've seen it and used it a few times you will be hooked. Go out and get it today - don't waste your money on inferior supermarket 'bargains'!

This machine is well worth the £150.00 I paid for it it has played every format of disk that I tried without so much as a glitch it's packed with features and as an added bonus it's great to look at and most people would think it was in the £300 + bracket.

Disks that I've tried

VCD

SVCD

DVD-R

Mp3

DVD's from regions 1,2,3 and 4

RCE disks no problem and all region switching is automatic.

Why pay for an inferior "supermarket special" when this is only a few pounds more?