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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

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`

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

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..