It has been a while since my last post. Here is a series of reviews...

After 3+ years my Philips DVP3360K died a violent death. I was going to watch a movie one night and when I turned on the AVR power the thing just popped loudly. When I opened it I saw that an IC exploded (which was located in the PSU section). I tried to fix it (even replaced the PSU with working one from another Philips) but I believe the main board had somehow become colateral damage.

A sad day but once again a time to select and buy new gear! :-) I contemplated at first if I should buy a Bluray player now but decided against it since the units within my budget were not 3D capable (which I hope to get into soon). Besides, I can always hook up my tablet to the Plasma if I wanted to watch a hi-def movie. Furthermore, we always just watch DVD or AVI material so a replacement DVD Player is the smart choice for us.

I am sure now that I wanted something that upscales (because I really see the difference), reads any DVD media, is a reputable and sturdy brand, and has HDMI and USB. Going through the available choices at the nearby appliance centers we narrowed it down to Pioneer, Philips, Sony, and Samsung. Eventually Sony and Samsung were dropped because they are said to be finicky with media.

So it was down to Pioneer and Philips specifically the Pioneer DV-3032KV and the Philips DVD3880K. Having had two Philips players over the past 8 years it seemed a logical choice specially considering the claim at something called CinemaHD but my gut feeling said that it was time to try the Pioneer unit which it turns out is a newly released model.

This is a short review of the Pioneer DV-3032KV. First it has the following main features: Upscaling, DivX, HDMI, USB, and a claim to be able to read any DVD media even scratched ones so it fits my needs nicely. Here are some details...

PROS:

Upscaling: the quality seems a bit better than my old player. At first the image looked dark but a little fiddling with the player's picture settings (gamma) yielded a very nice PQ. This thing even manages to smooth out compression artifacts from small Xvid files (with the help of the noise reduction settings on my TV). Most useful are the sharpening, brightness, contrast and gamma settings. Though one thing I noticed is that if you play a video from a USB flash drive, you cannot alter picture settings - it just uses the one you last set.

DivX and Xvid: compatibility is quite high. It plays large 2GB+ Xvids with no errors or issues. It even played some Xvids with GMC and Packed Bitstream smoothly - which I distinctly remember that my older Philips had trouble with stuttering and AV sync issues.

DivX/Xvid Subtitles: On the Philips player the font and size they used was big and blocky (very ugly). However on the Pioneer the font is small and elegant and just looks more professional. I love it though I wish I can tweak it too especially the color.

HDMI: nothing much to say here except it works and is my interface of choice. BTW the player displays the red Pioneer logo when idle which I think harks from their Plasma TV days. The low-key colors of the menu and logo are Plasma friendly (no burn in danger) which I appreciate because I have a Panasonic Plasma TV.

Disc Compatibility: it is outstanding! It reads everything I threw at it and I have a lot of DVDRs! Even scratched discs worked fine you just have to eject and reload the disc in the tray because sometimes it fails to read (same idiosyncracy as my previous Philips). Also one particular Double Layer media I have is very problematic on my previous player, the Philips cannot read the second layer properly but on this Pioneer it can be read but sadly also seems to buffer every few minutes (it is a cheap DL-DVDR I tried). But kudos to the Pioneer to be able to actually read such trash media!

Sound: here is where it separates itself far away from my old player. The sound options available is great. The EQ settings are extensive (but not user configurable, just presets). And the DRC and Dialog features work as advertised - I never noticed the DRC working on my old Philips it must be so subtle - but here it is very noticeable. DRC and Dialog enhancement are very useful on late nights so we don't annoy the neighbors! No more scrambling for the volume adjustment when the loud action starts!:-)

Misc features: the player also has Karaoke scoring and CD ripping features but I do not use them. Also has the large-type mic jack and has physical mic volume control in the middle of the unit.

The Player appears to be region free. This was stated by the salesman and it did play my imported disc without the need for unlocking.

CONS:

As for negative qualities, this is nitpicking but the main thing I can say about it at the moment is the remote is not as responsive as I would like. There is a small lag. Also the buttons are so small and they have grouped the important ones on the lower part while giving large space for just the numerical keys! Finally the arrow buttons do not fast forward and reverse like on the Philips, here they are just for cursor use.

Regarding fast forward/reverse another nitpick I have is that it only goes up to 3x speed - my old one went to 32x! though in practice it seems enough.

On the unit itself, there are no buttons for next/previous track (the circular design of the front control is only for show as it only has play and stop.

There is also no button for USB/DVD switching on the main unit.

The player also needs the user to switch between DVD and USB sources via the remote. The Philips autosenses this and presents the USB contents when plugged.

The menu is not automatically presented upon inserting a DVD or USB drive. It just says reading and then drops back to the Pioneer logo. You need to press "menu" on the remote for it to present you with the file browser.

Lastly I was disappointed with the zoom feature. It functions perfectly but I miss the ability to "zoom out" or make the picture small. This is useful for lowres AVI files to make them bearable to watch on a big screen.


In closing, I would recommend the Pioneer DV-3032KV to anyone needing a DVD/DivX/Xvid player that upscales. It has some negatives but they are small compared to the wealth of good features you get. The picture quality (after some tweaking depending on the TV) is excellent and the sound features are also exceptional. The DVD drive read all the dics I tried so this one's a keeper.

I just hope it lives up to its website claim of "a very low cumulative failure rate, proving long-term reliable performance". I do not wish to buy a new player every three years if that is at all possible with current tech durability.

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