The Pioneer DV-420V Owner's Thread - Page 2

Hi All,

After some weeks using the 420v, I have identified some weak points of if.

I must say, preliminarily, that I purchased it to watch divx movies. In fact, it plays quite well divx movies. As I live in Brazil I am used to see the movies with subtitles in English. However, the subtitles are too small and you cannot control its size, color, shape, etc. It is really annoying.

Another weak point is the browser. It does not show the full name of the files on the disc (musics or videos), which fact per se is very bad. In addition, because of its design, the browser does not use the total size of the screen, which is divided into 2 big windows but the right one is not used (?) so that you are left with a bad browser that only uses half of the screen.

Another weakness, under my perception, is that it chooses the subtitle based on the name of the movie. You do not see the subtitle file name. If the subtitle file name matches with the movie it works. I do think that it makes the things easier for most of the people, however, the browser should show all of the files on the disc, let you choose the subtitle file and, next, the video. Once you get used with this approach, you will not change, as it is much better than the strategy used by Pionerr (my Philips 3380 does that and it is really nice). My be the menu could let the user choose which way he/she prefers.

I think that if Pioneer could correct the above issues this player would be a REAL WINNER. The subtitle problem, however, makes me put this player aside and continue to use an old LG HT503 that I have. A firmware update could correct the above issues. I emailed Hakan but, unfortunately, he said that he does not own this player so that we are left by ourselves, without the great help of him. I also emailed Pioneer but I do not think I will get any answer.

Ideas would be appreciated.

Don't worry. I contacted Hakan too, he said he does not own the player but as soon as he gets the firmware on our players, he can help us.

He also kindly offered to send me a ground isolated RS-232 serial cable so I can solder it to my player board and get the firmware out of it and send it to him so he can work on it.

So, WE ARE NOT LEFT BY OURSELVES

It may take several months, but eventually happens. Don't worry that much just wait a bit.

Regards...

Philips are not DivX Home Theater Version 3 certified. They are DivX Ultra Certified. I believe Version 3 is newer and that is the reason I chose Pioneer over Yamaha and Philips.

Don't worry I am going to order all the parts I need for the data cable and soldering sockets tomorrow so they will be here next week and I send the firmware to Hakan as soon as possible.

Those are good reasons but when you think about the price of $90 for a player and the fact that they are all going to be obsolete in 3 years, I really don't care about mechanical quality. Maybe Pioneer has think the same and lowered the quality.

All of these technologies are going to be replaced with a single HTPC in coming years, Intel just shouldn't be this greedy and make some cheap CPUs for that matter. If you can make a HTPC with SSD hard drives and a CPU that can handle decent 1080p under $200, who needs Players anymore?

The Philips 3380 is a DVD recorded. It stays in my bedrom. It is a good player, however it is 480p and does not have HDMI outputs. My wife uses it mainly for recording tv programs, etc.

In my home theater I have a Pioneer VSH1019 and a LG 47 1080p, thus, I wanted a player that would match with the receiver so that I could you the Kurolink.

The Pioneer DV 420v is a good player. It gives you a very good control of the picture quality and a nice upscaling to 1080p, besided the fact that it "eats" almost all kind of medias and divx formats.

The problems, under my perception, as I mentioned above, are related to the size of the subtitles and the design of the browser.

I must say that you guys let me very happy with the possibility of upgrading the firmware of the DV 420v. I really hope that you can get the firmware out of it and together with Hakan succeed on improving it. I almost cannot wait to see the results.

As mentioned, I sent an email to Pioneer Japan (in English) during the last weekend. I did not expect to get any response from them. However, yesterday, I received an email from Pioneer Brazil, saying that they had received my email and they had forward it to the competent experts of Pioneer. Let´s see what will happen next...

I purchased this DVD player primarily for its ability to play media files through the USB port. It works great on all AVIs I've tried at 480i resolution. On anything higher, it says "Resolution not supported" although I do have a 720p set. Does anyone know if it is capable of playing higher resolution media files, whether AVI or otherwise?

Pioneer is going down no matter what. I am not satisfied with this player but since I got it from Amazon (no retail store had it) I cannot return it. I paid the full $89.00 price too!!

It does play DivX! That is all it is good for and I don't need to attach my laptop to the TV every time I download something. But for the music, it is just not made for music. I am thinking about changing my Marantz SR-5004 order to SR-6004 to cover USB music! But that is about $350 more bucks.

I don't care about analog DTS since I will use HDMI cables but good to know what else this player sacrifices to lower the price. I preferred paying $120 and get something nicer instead of this xxxx.

Thanks for the info. I am not sure but none of the previous models are DivX Home Theater Version 3 certified. I guess they are all DivX Ultra certified which is older. The good thing about DV-420 is Version 3 certification.

This is the new project: http://www.labtek.it/aurora.html It is a up hotted 610. Here is more of an older player: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/l...exclusive.html

5000 euro??

In search of universal players, if we rule out SACD, Dune plays almost everything else including x264.

http://dune-hd.com/index.php?do=players

BTW, I am going to receive the parts next week, so I can send you the firmware of 420 soon.

Hi all.

I bought my Pioneer 420 a few months ago and I love it. I've got a 1TB HD attached to the front USB and it plays .avi's flawlessly after formatting it to FAT32.
I have two issues with it that I would love to see remedied somehow....

#1. The file name size in the GUI of the USB menu is way too short....I think it's only 13 characters which sucks for TV shows etc. There are 2 big "windows" in the menu but the one on the right is useless, except for taking up half the screen. Is there any way to get the menu to to show more characters?

#2. It can't play the X264 HD codec which would be very sweet.

Thanks in advance.

I got the 420 to replace a Philips - as I only watch DIVX avi's.

When a disk is ejected or turned-off, this is supposed to 'remember' where I last left off - but when I put the disk back in, it starts at the beginning of the first AVI file on it. Tried hitting play once it loaded - same effect.

Anyone else try to use this function?

I dont think this function works on DivX, only DVD!

I tried that on DivX files on USB and it doesn't work. When you turn off, it will forget where you have been in the movie.

It also turns itself off when you press STOP once and wait too long to get back to the system (also forgets where movie was after this auto power off).

BTW, what's wrong with VFD and clock calculations!?!! It shows 65:33, 75:45, 85:55, why they did not make it like normal DVD players, like 01:05:33, 01:15:45, 01:25:55.

This model advertised it would 'remember' where you left off for up to 5 DVD's, and I (mistakenly?) believed it would be 5 avi's on a single disk also. I tried it with both a burned disk and USB - neither worked.

I did disable the auto turn-off feature - so that it will hold where I'm at when I press Stop....but now concerned about any HW issues of leaving it on like this for hours/days before I resume where I was at.

Is anyone aware of any mfg/model that truly 'remembers' where you left off in a DIVX/AVI file?

Can anyone share their dvd PICTURE SETTINGS please!

To list more problems for this player, after using it for about a month and watching over 30 DivX movies, I have found that in 90% of the time when you rewind or fast forward the movie, the sound will be out of sync with video and there is absolutely no way to fix this!!

Even if you turn the player off, turn it on and use SEARCH function to go to exact time like 20 minutes, it still will be out of sync! The only way is to watch the video from start!! You can leave it on for 20 minutes (or whatever) until it gets to the point you want!!

Anyway, it was one more thing to share.

After FF or FR you should press pause and then play instead for just play

I tried that plus pressing STOP once and then PLAY again. Nothing works. In 90% of the time you need to play the movie from the start to reach the point you wanted.

And a little birdy told me the easy modified firmware should be available sometime next week, so fingers crossed.

BTW, the multiregion firmware runs very good, I installed it yesterday and I do not see the out of sync problem with soundtrack and movie anymore.

I told you I will get the cable

Don't worry I made the cable from Hakan instructions and it really rocks. (one minor thing is that you need to use MTKTool v.2.45.03 because version 1.31 does save the firmware incorrectly and in 1 MB size not the correct 2MB)

http://www.pioneerfaq.info/english/d...on=Dead_Player

Really, you can load DV-610 into DV-420?? Hakan told me they changed many things in the new firmware so maybe DV420 has better divx handling and support. Also DV610 and DV420 use different flash and MTK so I am not so sure about it.

I don't have any DVD Audio to test but it is good to know it is an option. I really only care about MP3 shuffle and next/previous album/folder functionality which the prior is not an easy thing to do I guess.