Home > Consumer Reviews > Pioneer DVR-440HX-S 80GB HDD DVD Recorder - Silver

Had the DVR-440 for over a week now and so far have been pleased with the results. Perhaps a week is too soon to write a review in terms of reliability but I'll post again if anything really bad happens.

I feel the 80GB hard drive is more than enough space for what we want and so far I don't regret not buying the 160GB version (DVR 540) instead. In uncompressed format (SP) this will tape approx. 35 hours of TV onto hard drive and due to, what I consider to be, its large size I've set it up the timer to record everything we watch on a regular basis so that if we do miss it we'll have it on hard drive now. If we don't watch it then it is easy enough to delete any one of the programmes simply by selecting the programme from a menu like display and pressing the red button to delete. For me, it is this sort of flexibility that makes it so much better than a video recorder where everything is stored chronologically and you have to wind the tape to find the programme you wanted to delete and even then you would have tape over it if there is a programme you wanted to keep further on in the tape etc. etc.

As well as SP, there is a long play option, extended play, extended extended play, ... and so on and in the lowest quality format it claims it will record up to 227 hours onto harddrive but I haven't tried this yet to see what the quality is like on playback. I believe the sound is in mono for one thing. In default SP mode, however, on playback the quality is the same as when it was first broadcast in digital i.e. DVD like. So, from this aspect we are v.pleased. There is even a XP (extra high quality) option but I've yet to try this.

If you want to keep anything permenantly or transfer to another DVD player then you always have the option of burning it onto DVD. We have had the DVR-440 in our livingroom and a normal DVD player in our bedroom and part of the reason for buying the DVR-440 was so we could record onto DVD if we wanted to watch a programme in our bedroom. One thing to bear in mind is this can be more hassle than the old way of just taping a video and then watching it on a video player in another room. For example, if your other DVD players in the house can only play back DVD-R or DVD-RW then you will have to finalize the disk first. This can take several minutes in some cases. If, however, it can play DVD+RW then there is no need to finalize the disk and it really is just a case of taking the recorded DVD+RW out of the DVR-440 and playing it on your other player. As well as recording, the DVR-440 will also play commercial DVDs as well and can be connected to a 5.1 speaker system (which I don't have sadly)

The Guide+ system that comes with the DVR-440 is just an alternative electronic programme guide to the one you get when you press 'Guide' on a normal freeview box. It is certainly more colourful but some might argue that this actually makes it more difficult to see what is on at a glance. Fortunately, you can turn this option off and just have the normal digital guide instead. One thing I do like though, which is a feature of both EPGs, is that you can just browse programmes and then highlight the one you want to record and press the red button. Next when you select the 'schedule' tab you will see that the programme you want to record has been entered in automatically and you don't have to type in the start and end times and channel manually. This saves a lot of time in my opinion. One minor critism though is that if your programme is on from 9 - 10pm, for example, then it will tape exactly 1 hour from 9pm so if it overruns slightly then it will get cut off prematurely. This has happened to us already on at least one occasion. However, when browsing through the list of programmes scheduled to record, there is an option of adding on extra time. This is in increments of 10 minutes so I've got into the habit of just adding on 10 minutes for each programme in the list. It would be nice if you could set this to happen automatically though when you select the programmes to record in the first place without having to go through each of them individually adding on 10 minutes. There is the PDC option but this can only be used on analogue programmes and not one selected from the EPG.

Only other critism is that the Pause Live TV feature doesn't appear to work. The manual explains this only works on analogue source anyway (which I think is a bit of a con) but even then I've found it doesn't happen. These are minor critisms though which I've why I've stuck with 5 stars but I would give it 4.5/5 if I could.

I have been a fan of Pioneer products since I got a pair of over the ears headphones back in the early eighties. My stacking hi-fi is Pioneer and still going strong after 17 years so when I was casting around for a HDD recorder/DVD Recorder, Pioneer was one of the brands I looked at first. I was delighted to find this model being sold through Amazon so cheaply - in fact I began to wonder what was wrong with it to make it so cheap bearing in mind the quality of the brand. However, I took the plunge and bought it and don't regret it at all.

What you get is a very nice looking, well equipped piece of kit that does everything that I need and probably plenty that I don't. The 80Gb disk is more than big enough for me - big enough to record many programs at SP quality which is so close to broadcast quality that I can't tell the difference. The higher quality level of xp must be for people with perfect eyesight only (and huge plasma screens perhaps). The functionality is fine and mostly intuitive. Okay so the instruction book is huge but at least it dosn't miss anything out.

Thre pause live tv feature is a revelation. Like the previous reviewer, I could not get it to work initially. I found that using the "download from tv" option on the analogue channel setting seemed to disable it. By using the "autoscan" method instead, I found that the feature started working. This may be the solution for my set up only (Philips tv), but the customer service folk are very helpful and will go through it over the phone if my solution doesn't help.

In a nutshell this is, in my opinion, tremendous value for money and I highly rate it.

I've had this machine for nearly 3 weeks now and I've found it to be a super buy.It has played just about every disc I've tried,the one thing it doesn't seem to play is a DVD disc with MP3 files,it plays MP3 files on CD perfectly though so it's not a big problem.The built in Digital (Freeview) tuner is great,no more recording from rubbishy analogue TV signals.SP recording quality is great,LP is pretty good too tough I wouldn't go any lower than LP quality as the picture becomes pixelly at fast moving parts.The editing facilities of the machine are excellent too,you can easily cut out adverts from programs and you can then copy them from the Hard drive to a DVD if you want to keep the program.All in all this is a great machine and I'd recommend it.It does make a humming noise when on but you soon get used to it and hardly notice it.I just hope my usual jinx doesn't get hold now,usually when I write a glowing review for a product it all starts going wrong(fingers crossed).Buy this machine with confidence,you won't be disappointed.

We've had our recorder for a few weeks now & think it's fab (this is our first one). The electronic programme guide (EPG) is brilliant, especially the fact that this "talks" to our Sky box & can record programmes through the Sky box without having to set both machines to the correct channel. We have recorded from Sky by choosing the programme from the EPG (this shows the "main" Sky channels only) & also by typing in the channel number & setting to record manually. The staff in retail shops advised us that no recorder could communicate with Sky, which is completely wrong! The other great feature we've found is that you can record & watch at the same time. Brilliant. Still going through the instructions but am amazed by this!! Definitely would recommend this to anyone!!

We've had one of these for a couple of months now, and love it. I wanted to replace all the other boxes under the TV with one simple piece of equipment, and this fits the bill perfectly.

Build quality is superb and setting it up was very easy. The menus are all very intuitive and I've barely referred to the instruction book.

Record quality is plenty good enough. The one-touch record facility from the programme guide is simplicity itself, and the 80Gb hard drive is more than adequate. Copying programmes onto a CD is also incredibly easy.

There are just two weaker points that I could highlight:
1. The box can only record to +R and +RW in real time (no 'fast copy')
2. Only one digitial tuner means we can't watch another channel while recording.

There are two "extra touches" that impressed me particularly:
1. Video In sockets on the front to connect other devices without shifting the box (such as a digicam)
2. Ability to connect a VCR and transfer old tapes onto DVD - again, so easy...

For a straightforward, high quality machine, this really is outstanding and we highly recommend it.