My first impressions of my new Pioneer SD-582-HD5
03-22-00, 04:59 AM
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Well I received my 58" wide screen TV on Monday and thought I would give you guys my intial impressions. First off I'm glad I went with the 58" instead of the 64" as even the 58" is a beast (size wise). The Pioneer is a very nice looking TV (while off) with it's woodgrain cabinets that are squared off giving you a large surface space on top to place other HT equipment. The rollers are very nice (and quiet)and need very little energy to get the TV rolling.
When I turned on the TV I went immediately to the convergence section and did a convergence on all modes that the TV offered. It is so nice to have the 72 point convergence as the 7 and 9 point ones are just not very useful. The 72 Point convergence is nice in that you don't need to go into service mode as it is incorporated in the user settings menu. I then put in the Avia DVD to get my video settings setup opimimally. So now I have everything converged/optimized and now the moment of truth, I place The Fifth Element in my DVD player and let er' rip! Right off the bat I know I am viewing DVD's better the I have ever watched them before as the intial menu comes up. I am in a hurry so I go and select the scene where the aliens arrive to pick up the element stones. MAN the clarity and vividness of the colors was just breathtaking! Explosions are absolute eye candy and clearer then I have ever seen before. I intended to just watch a few minutes and then finalize hooking up the rest of my HT setup when I look up and by God it's almost an hour and a half gone by. I just couldn't bring myself to turn off the DVD, I was that enthrald. I then finished hooking up the rest of my setup and decided to try a Laserdisc to see how they looked on the TV. Here is where I had my one disappointment. I placed one of the Star Wars THX Laserdisc (The Empire Strikes Back) and started watching. The picture quality when I was watching on my 32" Toshiba before I got the Pioneer was very good so I was figuring oooh this should be nice. Well I was introduced to the only drawback that these highend HDTV's have and that is that films (on any media) that have any anomalies will show up ten fold on these TV's. The colors were a lot more washed out and the picture was pretty soft. Well I was pretty disappointed at that point so I popped in Independence Day and was quite relieved when I saw a MUCH improved video. Of course the picture quality wasn't what DVD is as you can only use S-Video for Laserdiscs as opposed to Component for DVD. Still the Independence Day Laserdisc was very nice to watch indeed. Now I'm relaxing pretty good knowing that the Laserdisc player (Pioneer DVL-919) was playing very nicely through the new TV. I am though pretty surprised at how bad the Star Wars THX Laserdiscs looked though. I did hook up my 32" Toshiba to the Laserdisc player and watched a bit of the Star Wars Laserdisc and if you watch it up close enough you can see the anomalies in the video, thus the one curse with having a very large high-definition TV.
So overall I must say that this TV is and absolutely incredible TV and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a HDTV in the future. Very well built and has the biggest array of inputs I have seen on a TV to date.
Now the wait is on for Dish Network to release their HD satellite receiver so I can enjoy the TV in the manner that it excells at the most!
If anyone has any questions on this TV feel free to eMail or reply to this post and I'll answer you if I can.
When I turned on the TV I went immediately to the convergence section and did a convergence on all modes that the TV offered. It is so nice to have the 72 point convergence as the 7 and 9 point ones are just not very useful. The 72 Point convergence is nice in that you don't need to go into service mode as it is incorporated in the user settings menu. I then put in the Avia DVD to get my video settings setup opimimally. So now I have everything converged/optimized and now the moment of truth, I place The Fifth Element in my DVD player and let er' rip! Right off the bat I know I am viewing DVD's better the I have ever watched them before as the intial menu comes up. I am in a hurry so I go and select the scene where the aliens arrive to pick up the element stones. MAN the clarity and vividness of the colors was just breathtaking! Explosions are absolute eye candy and clearer then I have ever seen before. I intended to just watch a few minutes and then finalize hooking up the rest of my HT setup when I look up and by God it's almost an hour and a half gone by. I just couldn't bring myself to turn off the DVD, I was that enthrald. I then finished hooking up the rest of my setup and decided to try a Laserdisc to see how they looked on the TV. Here is where I had my one disappointment. I placed one of the Star Wars THX Laserdisc (The Empire Strikes Back) and started watching. The picture quality when I was watching on my 32" Toshiba before I got the Pioneer was very good so I was figuring oooh this should be nice. Well I was introduced to the only drawback that these highend HDTV's have and that is that films (on any media) that have any anomalies will show up ten fold on these TV's. The colors were a lot more washed out and the picture was pretty soft. Well I was pretty disappointed at that point so I popped in Independence Day and was quite relieved when I saw a MUCH improved video. Of course the picture quality wasn't what DVD is as you can only use S-Video for Laserdiscs as opposed to Component for DVD. Still the Independence Day Laserdisc was very nice to watch indeed. Now I'm relaxing pretty good knowing that the Laserdisc player (Pioneer DVL-919) was playing very nicely through the new TV. I am though pretty surprised at how bad the Star Wars THX Laserdiscs looked though. I did hook up my 32" Toshiba to the Laserdisc player and watched a bit of the Star Wars Laserdisc and if you watch it up close enough you can see the anomalies in the video, thus the one curse with having a very large high-definition TV.
So overall I must say that this TV is and absolutely incredible TV and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a HDTV in the future. Very well built and has the biggest array of inputs I have seen on a TV to date.
Now the wait is on for Dish Network to release their HD satellite receiver so I can enjoy the TV in the manner that it excells at the most!
If anyone has any questions on this TV feel free to eMail or reply to this post and I'll answer you if I can.
03-22-00, 06:46 AM
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Congrats Frank!
Glad to hear it's working well.
Too bad about Star Wars though. I've been hearing for some time now about how DVD can make problems with old transfers stand out even more due to the higher resolution, so I guess it only stands to reason that an HD TV would have the same effect. But it's still a little sad to see.
Do you think a line doubler would offer any improvement? You only mentioned component inputs, not whether they were progressive.
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-David
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Glad to hear it's working well.
Too bad about Star Wars though. I've been hearing for some time now about how DVD can make problems with old transfers stand out even more due to the higher resolution, so I guess it only stands to reason that an HD TV would have the same effect. But it's still a little sad to see.
Do you think a line doubler would offer any improvement? You only mentioned component inputs, not whether they were progressive.
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-David
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03-22-00, 10:08 PM
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Blade
I'm not using a external Line doubler, just the built-in one in the TV.
bfrank
Probably won't see much of the outdoors for the next couple of weeks! Heck, I have 200+ DVD's that I have that now have to be re-watched on the new TV. Geee, tough job but I guess I'm up to it.
One note: I watched The Last Starfighter tonight and the video transfer was pretty bad! Tons of highly grainy scenes but was decent in the bright scenes and CGI scenes.
I'm not using a external Line doubler, just the built-in one in the TV.
bfrank
Probably won't see much of the outdoors for the next couple of weeks! Heck, I have 200+ DVD's that I have that now have to be re-watched on the new TV. Geee, tough job but I guess I'm up to it.
One note: I watched The Last Starfighter tonight and the video transfer was pretty bad! Tons of highly grainy scenes but was decent in the bright scenes and CGI scenes.
