Pioneer's DVD players with HDMI, SACD, and DivX support

We were kind of hoping Pioneer would get a little ironic on us and throw some HDCP on their new HDMI-enabled DV-696AV, 490V, and 393, the highest end of which is capable of playing back DVD-R/W, DVD audio, and SACD (with full six channel 24 / 192 audio), as well as DivX on a burned disc. Yeah, it upconverts to 720p / 1080i, but we all know what the real draw here is. Hey, they gotta keep selling DVD players somehow until their Blu-ray players hit the market, right?

[E71 @ Mar 28th 2006 10:41AM]

A little too late. Nice specs though.

[hmurchison @ Mar 28th 2006 10:42AM]

By the very nature of the HDMI connections support for HDCP is there. You cannot have an HDMI enabled device that doesn't support it.

[cyberdork @ Mar 28th 2006 10:47AM]

Does anyone know if these new DVD players with upscaling can also play the high-res versions of TV-rips? Right now I have a 1 year old LG DVD/Divx player which doesn't manage to play anything bigger than PAL/NTSC.

[chuck @ Mar 28th 2006 11:19AM]

chinese maker BBK sells a device with exactly the same specs for $147 in Russia. i wonder how much pioneer will charge. in any case lack of FireWire means SACD output is *analog* which sucks (same for BBK).

cyberdork: i don't think it will.

[CiXel @ Mar 28th 2006 11:50AM]

#4 You do realize that SACD is an AUDIO format? Firewire would do you no good. The only way to listen to it IS analog as there are very few D/A's that could even decode the imformation (of course that assumes a modified player) In Fact, unlike DVD-Audio, there is NO video information present on an SACD. I'll be happy to finally be able to listen to all the nice hybrid discs that I have sitting around. Mmmm... Hi-Res Audio :P

[Joe @ Mar 28th 2006 11:55AM]

Yeah, the big question here is if I burn a DivX disk at 720p goodness, will it play it back at 720p goodness?

Ideally you could burn DL DivX DVD's and play them back in HD-friendly resolutions. Any clue if this is the case?

[Nick @ Mar 28th 2006 12:24PM]

DIVX? Isn't this just another case of the too-little-too-late problem that a lot of high-end manufactures are hitting lately?

Anybody with the capability of burning a DIVX disc from their "private" library could just as easily burn an MP4 disc with AVC/AAC or ASP/AAC (much higher quality than DIVX). DIVX was great back in the day, but has been overshadowed by newer and faster codecs as of late.

[Kosmonaut @ Mar 28th 2006 12:45PM]

To answer #6, no, the highest resolution of DivX playable on this device is 720x480p.

As to #7, DivX is MPEG-4 ASP, so I'm not sure what you are saying about quality. Also, why re-encode a DivX file to MPEG-4 AVC and AAC in MP4 format? The beauty of this device is that your DivX files are already playable, no re-encoding necessary. There are no comparable devices out today that play mp4 files anyway.

[Nick @ Mar 28th 2006 1:10PM]

#8, while DIVX does conform to ASP MPEG4, there are BETTER (read that higher quality) codecs that use ASP MPEG4. AAC is also a MUCH better audio codec to use than the MP3 variant used in DIVX encoding (I'm referring to the MP3 codec embedded in Dr. Divx and the old WMA v2 codec that was in the original hacked divx 3.11 codec).

There are also indeed players that playback MP4's with AAC audio natively, the KISS DP-600 for example. This player not only has HDMI and optical audio output, but also has standard component video output, svido, scart, 10/100 ethernet (for network playback) integrated wireless, etc.

My point is, modern players should support the modern codecs as well as the old-school codecs (like the KISS player does).

BTW, the link for the supporting documentation behind my comment is
http://www.kiss-technology.com/?p=600en&v=users

Cheers.

[MrSatyre @ Mar 28th 2006 2:40PM]

#5, you do realize that there are MANY DVD players which play back SACD through i.LINK (a.k.a. FireWire, a.k.a. IEEE-1394), don't you? And that there are MANY preamps and receivers which will accept such a digital connection? This has been an industry standard for about four years now. Started with Pioneer's DV-47Ai model, which was the first to output DVD-A and SACD via FireWire to their reference receiver, the VSX-49TXi (model #'s may be different depending on the country you live in). Many other brands started following suit in the years that followed. There are PLENTY of DA's which will handle SACD. FireWire would have significantly bumped up the price of the DV-696AV, which is priced ludicrously low to begin with.

[Dan Ray @ Mar 28th 2006 3:20PM]

I'm niave - why didn't they build the SACD and DVD-A audio outputs into the HDMI standard>

[Kosmonaut @ Mar 28th 2006 3:59PM]

Nick, you are right, there is the KiSS player, but that is pretty much it. And it's pretty damn expensive. There are thousands of DVD players that can play DivX, however. As to other MPEG4 ASP codecs that are better? And AAC over MP3? Frankly, I don't see it, but go with whatever works for you.

[taihen @ Mar 28th 2006 4:21PM]

#12 - you're right, KISS is about the same price as a cheap Win MCE box, with similar functionality. So, it might be better just to buy an MCE

[txfilmguy1 @ Mar 28th 2006 4:22PM]

#11. Sony and other supporters of SACD and DVD-A consider them dead formats. An audio-only blu-ray standard is being developed and will replace older multi-channel formats with up to 7.1 uncompressed audio. Therefore there was no need to standardize them into HDMI. Sucks if you have built a library, but that's the way it is.

[Eudaimo @ Mar 28th 2006 5:19PM]

I have the prior Pioneer DVD Player, and I have nothing but praise for it. Cheap, slim and functional. I rarely use it to play Divx (I play most of my divx files on my Xbox Media Center, which is more versatile), but I've tested it and it appears to work.

A note about DVD-A and SACDs. The Pioneer does an excellent job decoding audio discs and is one of relatively few players to offer playback at this pricepoint. All decoding is handled onboard and sent to the receiver via analog RCA connections. Accordingly, I have both a digital cord running for digital audio (dolby/dts), and 6 analog RCA cords.

[Zach @ Mar 29th 2006 12:20AM]

I honestly don't get what the big deal is regarding HDCP and upscaling. I mean, copywrite issues exsist for current dvd players, so what makes upscaling so special? I have an older HDTV (love the HD picture on it) and it sucks big time all I got is component inputs. I'd love to get one of these players for it.

[Simon Fearby @ Mar 29th 2006 2:33AM]

The Zensonic Z500 (http://www.z500series.com) can play via Comp/SCART/HDMI

Video:
MPEG-1/2 MP@HL, MPEG-4, ASP@L5 (720p), WMV9 MP@ML (720p), XviD (DivX), Nero Digital�, QuickTime with MPEG4 encoding.

Audio: MPEG 1 I,II and III, WAV, CD Audio, OGG, FLAC,
WMA, AAC, Internet Stream�s Supported: MP3 and ASX

Images: JPG/JPEG2000, BMP, GIF, PNG, TIFF

And more via firmware updates.

[J.I.G. @ Mar 29th 2006 2:41AM]

The post contains three sentences. To sum up:
"HDCP,
HDMI,
DV-696AV,
490V,
393,
DVD-R/W,
DVD,
SACD,
24,
192,
DivX,
720p,
1080i."

Head. Hurts.

[Don @ Mar 29th 2006 3:06PM]

Re SACD and DVD-Audio over HDMI:

HDMI has supported audio since version 1.1. An HDMI-enabled player, such as the Panny S97, can send all dts, DVD-Audio, and audio tracks in digital format through the HDMI 1.1 interface to an HDMI-enabled receiver (SA-XR70 anyone?).

Support for SACD over HDMI was just recently added in the HDMI 1.2 specification.

So as soon as devices with HDMI 1.2 show up, you can play SACD over HDMI.