Pioneer Elite 59avi Owners Thread - Page 50

thanks ted_b thats what I needed to know. mike

I just bought a DV-59AVi today at best buy. The first thing I did was to open it up. I have to say that for a player that used to have an MSRP at $ 1700 the build quality is cheapish. Not even close to for example DV-AX10 or my old SONY 9000ES.

I noticed that its using a switch mode power supply usually found in lesser gear like Malata and such.

I checked the part number for the P/S board and it seams to be the same as for the european and asian model. Does that mean that this P/S is multi voltage ? It is a switch mode so in theory it could be.

Anyone has the service manual and the time to check this?

Next step is to make the player region free and start testing it.

Best regards /// Carl-Fredrik

Can someone tell me if enabling the iLink option disables the analog outputs?

Yes, on page 22 of the manual it says" When the i.LINK indicator is lit on the front panel (see Front panel on page 26), no audio is output from the other digital or
analog audio jacks."

Thanks Ted. I looked through the manual (p.86), but missed that section.

I thought the 59avi WAS region free? Several web sites list it as region free in the specs even. Is this a mistake or did they change that?

Its not regionfree. There are websites selling already modified players. I am going to order a plug mod for mine so I can skip trailers.

///CF

What is a "plug mod" I hate trailers.

Probably referring to this from a few pages back #1355:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post6868369

I just got a march 2005 build and the firmware is .526. Region 1 player, USA. Not sure if this helps or confuses things in regards to firmware.

I did a head to head with my Denon 3910 @ 480p component. Pic on the 59avi was very good, it would be hard to tell them apart. Using Avia, the 59avi did show .07 chroma delay on all but the red channel via component. 3910 was pretty much spot on.

The audio was good, but the 3910 bested it in two channel. Vocals had a warmer, more robust sound. I did a lot of A/Bing, and preferred both CD and SACD on the Denon everytime.

Still, the 59avi is a steal IMO at current street prices. The feature set and quality are hard to catch, even at 2-3X the price.

It sounds more like a head-to-head calibration since you did not say much on their difference in picture quality.

My set has been recently ISF'd by forum member Cheezmo and optimized for 480p (one of it's native scan rates). Other than dropping the 59avi's IRE down to 0.0, and changing deinterlacing to Auto2, there's not a lot of calibration to do. As tested, both of them have relatively correct output voltages, and monkey'ing around with the Hue and Sharpness, etc., of each of the players' controls is bound to cause more harm than good.

Head to head, you can check for color saturation, detail, deinterlacing performance and macroblocking (!). Other than the most minor case of MB on one scene in Bug's Life, the 3910 was solid compared to the 59avi.

Thanks for the info, just wonder what kind of screen n projector are you using.

Also, did you have a chance to compare the picture quality between 59 n 79 ?

No opportunity to do a comparison to the 79avi, I'll leave that to Kris Deering and the Secrets folks

My set is a 55" Mitsubish Diamond CRT rear projection, model WS-55908.

However, after I acquire an used 59Avi here, the picture quality is still not as good as my Marantz 7600, thru HDMI. The Marantz really give me that 3-dimension look on a lot good quality dvd titles, like StarWar 3, but not on the Pioneer. If you have a chance, check out the 7600.

However, after I acquire an used 59Avi here, the picture quality is still not as good as my Marantz 7600, thru HDMI. The Marantz really give me that 3-dimension look on a lot good quality dvd titles, like StarWar 3, but not on the Pioneer.

If you have a chance, check out the 7600, since this is a model that came out 2 years after the Pio, maybe technology really catch up on the 59Avi.

I can't believe that I found this, but I did. I just got an HDMI capable display, and I remembered that there was some really cool HDMI setting suggestions earlier in this thread. Post 1242 to be exact (although I need to see if there's anything else).

Rob- Could you add this to the 1st post, the way that you have the Black info (#348) and the firmware check, etc?

Thanks! Very useful thread even to some of us longtime owners!


Quick sidenote is that I'm still looking for the "last, best SD DVD player" for myself. (I've posted before that I'm going to sit out HD-DVD and Blu-ray until it's clear that there's a winner, or if either one actually becomes a mass market force.) I've already knocked the Denon 5910 off the list (too expensive), the 79AVi (the 59AVi is a better video player), the Yamaha 2500 (MB), and the Onkyo 1000 (lip sync, and I remember problems with blacker than black and green push mentioned; 3910 is also gone because of comments about the green, and reliability). Really, the last one is the Marantz 9600. So the 1st thought is now I'm getting nervous that with all of the info we have to best calibrate the 59AVi, that I could get a "better" player, but that I might not be able to calibrate it to its fullest. The 2nd thought is that, the 9600 is actually based on the 59AVi, so I wonder if the best settings here would work for that player too?

Hi, Rob.

I tested these settings with 480p, 720p and 1080i as well with the same results, so they are universal.

Carl- You're still here. Thanks so much for your hard work in coming up with those settings. Now ... I just need an HDMI cable! (I thought the i.Link cable that came withe 59AVi that I tucked away when I first got it was an HDMI cable... Never got one.)

Just keeping things straight: The BTB problem was only with HDMI->DVI and was fixed in first firmware update. There was never a "green push" issue that I recall. Unfortunately the random lip synch issue kept this player from being a big winner - taking the chance scares away a lot of people.

larry

Rob, you may want to add the discovery of firmware versions 516 and 526 to the main page, for completeness sake.

Larry- Acknowledged. But I do remember at least one person mentioning the green push early on. Maybe their setup, I don't know.


Hey all- When I hook up the 59AVi to a Panny plasma via HDMI, I won't have access to the Color and Tint controls on the plasma. (Component, S-video yes, HDMI no, disabled.) Will I have to adjust things in the player? Or might it be correct as-is without any adjustment necessary?

Assuming you are using the commercial model Panny, it will be correct as-is. Color and Tint controls only affect the conversion from Component->RGB. Since the DV59Avi is doing the conversion, sending RGB data to the Panny, the controls are not applicable. Any set implementing Color/Tint when fed RGB data are incorrectly designed IMHO. That normally means that the set is converting RGB BACK TO COMPONENT internally, and then back to RGB for driving the pixels. Not a good idea.

Assuming you calibrate the grayscale to D65, your colors will be accurate. Calibrated a Panny yesterday, and it was spot on.

csundbom,

Can you confirm if the 59AVi correctly maps the DVD colorspace to SMPTE 274M standards when upscaling to 720p/1080i or leaves the image in NSTC SMPTE 170M at those higher resolutions?

Wish I could, but I have no device that accepts Component data over HDMI. Since I always receive RGB data from the player, the conversion has already been done internally. Once in RGB colorspace, the questions becomes moot. Maybe someone else can test it?

Ok. One further question: then if you pick RGB for HDMI output at 720p/1080i, the colorspace is always correct (this part I understand), then why do many recommend using YCrCb for HDMI output of other players (i.e. Denon 3910).

Is it because RGB can only be 8-bit whereas YCrCb can be 10-bit if the video processor within the player supports it?

The content on the DVD disc is 8-bit. There may be further processing inside the DVD player, video processor or display that could use the extra bits to avoid rounding errors. I can imagine cases where upscaling DVD players could use the extra bits to make smoother transitions in the interpolated data (480i->720p/1080i). I use an external video processor, so I output 480i myself. In that case, it would not make a difference if I use 8, 10 or 12 bits of data, assuming the DVD player outputs the values that are on the DVD. You have to look at the whole signal chain (including the internal processing in the display) to figure out if the extra bits get you anything.

Hi Carl,

Is the HDMI output on 59Avi a 4:4:4 or 4:2:2 ? It is not switchable in this Pio unit, but my other player, Marantz 7600, has that selection n will benefit from the 12-bit video processing in my Sony HS-60 projector..