Sony RDR-HX780 Specs and Info - Page 4

What source was he playing back, Dr. Watson?

Could he have been playing back something recorded from a VCR or another external source, and the behavior he saw was from the original source?

Right as always, wajo, I forgot because I find the default 10 min autochapters on my own "lowly Magnavox" to be just about perfect. (I didn't intend "lowly" to disparage the Magnavox, it was more to slam highfalutin, double-the-price Sony and Pioneer for not having as much common sense as Funai).


Excellent theory, Holmes: The Gears never said what the original source of his recording was, only that it was playing off the HDD. The AUTO display appearing along with a momentary video blackout could very likely have come from a VCR source. That, or Moriarty has been sabotaging this 780.

Panasonics(when recording to and from HDD) don't have any auto-chapter settings either I'd settle for a 5 or 10 minute option. I have many DVDs that are in excess of 2hrs with no chapters, I don't usually take the time to add them.

The auto Feature” Jeff Wild mentioned is for the HDD or DVD-VR mode only I believe. I never used it, but I think JeffWild is correct, the feature sounds kinda useless in North America.

The Canadian 780 does have an interval auto chapter setting but I think it may be for DVD rec only.

I have never used this feature as for time shifting I use the advance/replay buttons to skip ads and for archives I insert chapter marks manually, precisely were I want them on the HDD, than I HS-Dub bit for bit.

See the enclosed images from the Canadian users manual
1) No Separation
2) 10-minute intervals
3) 15-minute intervals

On both Pioneer and current Pioneer-derived Sony recorders, defined 10 or 15 minute autochaptering is only available for direct-to-dvd recordings. HDD recordings are limited to "no autochapters" or the worthless "auto chapter on scene change" options. The recording mode of the HDD has no effect on this, so the HDD should almost always be left in its default Video Mode (setting it to VR mode invites compatibility issues).

I know this is kind of an unrelated thread, but there seem to be some really knowledgeable peeps in here, so I hope someone can help my problem as well. I bought a Pioneer DVR-460H-K model over a year ago from Canada thru ebay. I'm perfectly happy with it except when trying to use the USB PC Connect function to play ANY kind of video file from my PC. I just recently found the divx registration number that comes with my model, duly registered it, and duly downloaded a divX movie, which I then copied to the 460's hard drive. When I try to play it, I either get a message that the "TV system" doesn't match (this happened when I tried to play the file while the DVR was recording something else) or the file plays but there is a white line on the left side of the screen and the tracking is off. Even when I hit pause, the white line keeps moving, tracking from the top to bottom of my screen. This has happened with every video file type I've tried...AVI, MP4, etc., but I thought for sure the divx would work since apparently the 460 is specifically set up for that. (JPGs and other non-video files work fine, so the PC/DVR connection is working fine, the files ARE being copied, etc.)

My guess was that this was maybe a region issue or something with the various files? Last time I checked Pioneer's Canada site, it said they would not provide after-purchase support to any non-Canadian residents, so I'm kind of out in the cold here. So does anyone have any idea what the problem might be and how I might fix it? Part of the very reason I wanted the unit was the ability to transfer files from PC to DVR.

Oh, I've also had some trouble playing DVDs a friend burned for me as well, maybe on Sony blanks but definitely a couple on Verbatim DVDs. Those don't show the scrolling white line--they just give a msg that the player can't play them or they're incompatible, etc. That's not really an issue for me, I can just avoid Verbatim disks or whatever, but I thought maybe it might be another clue to whatever's wrong or what I'm doing wrong. I sure would like to be able to use ALL the functions of this recorder, so I hope someone who knows more about this, especially the region stuff, can help me.

Unfortunately the Pioneer 460 (and 560 and 660 and 450-550-650 and the Sony 780) will not connect to a PC with any degree of usefulness, nor will they play or load DiVX files from a USB drive. These "media center" features are false advertising, period: forget about it, doesn't work, don't go to too much effort trying to troubleshoot: the mfr lied. They all did, I've seen very few DVD recorders that can do anything at all with DiVX files on a thumb drive. The Pioneers (and the Sony) can copy DiVX files to their HDDs from a DVD, but there's a very narrow range of DiVX files they're compatible with- no latest, invented-yesterday variations on DiVX, no weird aspect ratios, no mixed aspect ratios (4:3 and 16:9 in the same clip) and the Canadian models will not read PAL-format DiVX files you may have obtained from international sources (that last is the killer for most North American users: apparently no one in US or Canada posts NTSC DiVX files that anyone wants, all the files of interest seem to come from abroad in PAL format.) In other words: your DVD/HDD recorder is a box for working with TV sources, dubbing VHS tapes, or dubbing from your camcorder. If you want to fool around with DiVX files, use a dedicated DVD player (most players will accept any random file and play it without issue, recorders are much more limited in functionality.)

You should not have a problem playing most Verbatim or Sony discs you get from other people unless the person who made the disc for you slipped up somewhere. The two most common reasons you might not be able to play someone elses discs are that they burned them with buggy software like Nero, or they used their own DVD recorder of a different brand than yours and forgot to "finalize" the disc to make it compatible with other peoples hardware. DVD+RW discs are the easiest to lend, because they're generic and don't need to be finalized, but DVD-R, DVD+R and DVD-RW do need finalizing. Also if someone made you a backup of a commercial release, if it wasn't done correctly you might not be able to play it (this is easy to screw up if you don't know exactly how a program like DVDfab or DVDshrink works).

>>Unfortunately the Pioneer 460 (and 560 and 660 and 450-550-650 and the Sony 780) will not connect to a PC with any degree of usefulness, nor will they play or load DiVX files from a USB drive. These "media center" features are false advertising, period: forget about it, doesn't work, don't go to too much effort trying to troubleshoot: the mfr lied. They all did, I've <<

Thanks for saving me a LOT of trouble and grief. I feel kind of ripped off, but my Archos does a lot of the same things, though with not as good video quality, but I guess I can survive.


>>You should not have a problem playing most Verbatim or Sony discs you get from other people unless the person who made the disc for you slipped up somewhere. The two most common reasons you might not be able to play someone elses discs are that they burned them with buggy software like Nero, or they used their own DVD recorder of a different brand than yours and forgot to "finalize" the disc to make it compatible with other peoples hardware. DVD+RW discs are the easiest to lend, because they're generic and don't need to be finalized, but DVD-R, DVD+R and DVD-RW do need finalizing. Also if someone made you a backup of a commercial release, if it <<

No, these are all bootleg concert videos. I suppose he could've forgotten to finalize but I kind of doubt it. He's sent me close to 10 disks and the Verbatims are the only ones that won't play. The weird thing about it is that sometimes they DO play...sometimes I can load a disk and it'll play. Then if I take it out, play another one, and put it back in, it freaks the Pio out. So...I'm not gonna worry about this issue either. I've already copied the ones on Verbatim to other disks that play fine, and the Verbatims play fine in my Panasonic for that matter, so it's not like I can't access the content--I mainly wanted to know if I had some kind of a Canada vs US code issue going on, which I apparently don't.

So thank you again, you have saved me much, MUCH time in trying to mess with Pioneer customer support and/or trying to get in and change the region code and possibly ruin the thing entirely.

Hi, I've a lot of children's programs in my 780 HDD so I decided to dub a couple to a DVD-RW. Then I put the DVD in my computer but it wasn't recognized... I forgot to "finalize" it. After finalizing the DVD-RW in the 780, my computer kept not recognizing the disc.
2nd try : I used a DVD+R and this time I remembered to select the "finalize" option. Windows Media Player, VLC and Nero Recode 8 still don't recognize the media but DVDFab did : I "extracted" the DVD to disc, created an ISO with DVDShrink, mounted the ISO with DaemonTools Lite and then converted the programs to MPEG-4 with Nero Recode. It worked but after too many steps !!
Did I miss something when I dubbed HDD->DVD ? Should I try with another type of media (DVD-R or DVD+RW) ?
Thanks in advance !

I've never figured out exactly why, but DVDs made on Pioneer recorders (as well as some other brands) simply are not recognized by many common PC software players (including WM, KVM and MPC). File-level tools like IMGburn and CloneDVD or DVDshrink have no trouble recognizing them, but player software behaves as if no disc is loaded in the computer. The Sony 780 is a Pioneer design so suffers the same issues. Finalizing will make your 780 DVDs play fine on hardware players, but doesn't solve the maddening problem with PC players.

Very strange indeed.

I have a Sony 780 and I have Nero 7 Premium. I also have Windows Media Player installed. Since last September I've probably burned around 100 DVD-R discs and I've probably burned around 20 DVD-RW discs.

WMP and Nero 7 both recognize each and every disc I finalized on the 780 and inserted into my LG burner in my PC. Nero will playback or copy any of the discs just fine. WMP will playback the discs just fine.

Picture 1
Windows Media Player displaying a three-title menu created by the 780.

Picture 2
Captured frame from Windows Media Player of another disc created with the 780.

Picture 3
Nero Showtime displaying yet another disc menu created with the 780.

The only flaw I see is with the Windows Media Player displaying Unknown DVD - Time & Estimated Time - when in the menu mode. The actual DVD time is around 60 min.

Other than that all tittles display the correct time all chapters display correctly and all DVDs created by the 780 work fine with Nero and WMP.

Thanks Super Eye ! I'll try with a DVD-R then... may be it's the media ??
I forgot to mention that when I first tried to read the DVD+R and the DVD-RW discs directly with Nero Recode, Nero said that the discs were "Copy Protected".
Christian.

I'm in the same boat. I use 2 Pioneer 640's, and a Sony HX750 and HX780 almost every day to record to either DVD-RW or DVD+RW and have no problem playing them on any of my PC's (with either Windows Media Player or VLC Media Player), or copying them using Imgburn, or pulling the mpg stream into DVD Author for editing and menus. All discs are fully recognized.

Are you sure that when you recorded the DVD-RW, you were recording in Video Mode mode instead of VR mode? (this needs to be set via the recorder's setup menu)

When burning to RW, I always initialise them first... usually to video mode. I've not had any problems with various PC apps recognising them. Pio550.

Btw, is there any chance to fix the greenish tint problem via the Hidden menu? If somebody knows, please tell me so I won't try in vain.

I am getting rid of this recorder anyway (I cannot tolerate any kind of greenish tint on my DVD movies), so anything that can save it the last minute is welcome.

Thanks.

PS: I have also noticed that the greenish tint is a common desease among Pioneers. I went to Hard Rock cafe in Athens last night (yes, i live in Athens), and they have some Pioneer TVs along with some other TV sets in the walls, and the greenish tint the Pioneer TVs added to the picture was more than noticable compared to the other sets.

Good luck finding one at this point.

Thats more likely a coincidence. Pioneer sourced most of its television parts from Panasonic, including the screens. If they looked greenish compared to other sets in the cafe it may just have been the way they were adjusted by Hard Rock employees. The green tint problem some complain of in the Sony 780 is a recorder-specific HDMI bug, not something Pioneer intentionally designed into everything they ever made. The Pioneer TVs had no circuits in common with the dvd recorders, and the Sony versions of the Pioneer chassis were more likely to exhibit the hyperactive green response than Pioneers' self-branded recorders. The Sony 780 has some electronic issues due to its being a weird hybrid of a Pioneer 640 and Pioneer 550 with a Sony HDMI circuit and SATA reverse-engineered onto a Pio 640 motherboard (the 640 never had HDMI or SATA). The original Pioneer x50 and x60 models had HDMI and SATA designed into their newer motherboards from the beginning, along with an upgraded video encoder chip.

Well they had the display model for sure at the Thunder Bay Ontario CA Future shop. $299 and the sign didn't say anything about display model only, although I didn't see any new ones around it.
If it's the last one I'd guess the manager would drop 10% off the price, at least that's what they did a few years ago when I snagged the display model EH-55.
They also had a new LG w/250GB HDD for the same price but I'd go for the Sony any day, I'm not a fan of LG DVDRs.
As a sign of the times, they had 4 different Satellite DVRs but again just the 2 HDD DVDRs.

You're right jjeff.
The Sony 780 is still available at some stores.
Once FS and BB completely sells out from every store - they will pull it off the website.

Also, the Sony store (this is directly from Sony Canada) still has the 780 available at their website but as always they charge higher than anyone else. See direct Sony Canada link below.

http://www.sonystyle.ca/commerce/ser...ductId=1005060

Hope you had a nice time in Canada

Great time as usual. I'll be back in September for the blueberries
They had completely redone the store since last September and it took some getting used to. I'm always jealous of the Canadian DVD players. Most(including Sony) seem to play Divx DVDs. I don't currently use Divx but I always feel we're being denied that feature because of the strong presence of the MPAA in the US

I didn't know that.
I thought that a $35 - $75 dollar DVD player would be exactly the same regardless if for the US or CDN market. Thanks for pointing that out.

As for a strong presence of the MPAA in the US, we are about to get new copyright legislation, Bill C-32, something to do with digital locks.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...-montreal.html

So maybe if this bill goes through Canadians will get the same DVD players as our friends down south.

Oh and if you think that our blueberries are good - come down to British Colombia some time and give our famous herb a taste.

Hi

Have had this recorder for about 3 months and it has the most annoying problem.

When playing back TV programs recorded to HDD it seems to pause randomly for 1 to 2 seconds then restarts. The image remains on the screen and no sound. It has been connected to different TV's via HDMI (and different cables).

Everything else works fine playing back DVD's.

Would really appreciate any ideas about whats going on.

Thanks from NZ

A couple of WAGs:

1. Since DVDs play OK, and they're created with Component YCbCr video, try changing your HDMI Colour setting to YCbCr 4:2:2 Oor 4:4:4?) if not already there? Depends on your TV whether or not it remains on TCbCr cuz some default to RGB if they're noy YCbCr compliant. (No DVI involved, right?)

2. Again, since DVDs play OK, maybe your HDD titles were recorded at the highest-quality rec mode and that bit rate causes problems?

My RDR-HX780 handles the highest quality rec-mode without any problems.

CitiBear mentioned that the “SATA cable connections” tend to come lose on the Pioneers and the Sony clones causing problems with the HDD and perhaps that’s the problem? I believe CitiBear mentioned that this is caused by vibration and/or humid air but I’m sure the Pioneer master will eventually chime in and give you some tips mackt.