Pioneer DV490VK Multi Region DVD Player with HDMI Input

[ElDubya]

First of all, let me say hello. My name is Patrick and I live in Brisbane. I just happened to be researching DIVX players from good old Google, when I stumbled across these forums and what a wealth of information it was!

I originally bought one of those Telefunken DIVX players and found much to my disgust that it wasn't all it was touted to be, so I took it back for a refund. One of the ones that boasts "software upgradeable". Yeah right!

So I went and saw the friendly chaps at WoW Sight And Sound. I asked them for a rundown on DIVX players and the salesman told me he had purchased one of the Pioneer DV490VK's himself, and that it was an awesome machine. I took his word for it and told him that I will get home, hook it up and throw the first DIVX that comes to hand in it, and if it doesn't play it he will be hearing from me. He told me not to worry.

And I have to agree. For $185.00 this would have to be the best money I have ever spent on anything. Sure, it doesn't have 5.1 surround, but the sheer reliability of this thing more than makes up for it. It still sunds awesome through my 5.1 setup and whats more, it plays anything I throw at it.

IMHO, don't by anymore of this cheap and nasty shite. Buy the Pioneer DV490VK and save yourself the hassle. This machine is it.

Thanks for the initial information and I look forward to posting a lot more on my newfound home :)

Pat

[jokiin]

The Pioneers seem to be good all rounders, you may come across some files that won't play from time to time but really its more of a reflection on the files themselves and not the player.

[bac]

One gripe with the all Pioneer models thus far is they suffer video stutter with 23.976fps DivX/XviD files encoded with Packed Bitstream.

I know these files can be easily massaged to remove the problem, but IMHO it's a bit weak of Pioneer not to have addressed the issue seeing as how most other Mediatek players managed to do so over a year ago.

[jokiin]

One gripe with the all Pioneer models thus far is they suffer video stutter with 23.976fps DivX/XviD files encoded with Packed Bitstream.

I know these files can be easily massaged to remove the problem, but IMHO it's a bit weak of Pioneer not to have addressed the issue seeing as how most other Mediatek players managed to do so over a year ago.

Most MTK players suffer this problem, it's not unusual, we have been lucky to have some available recently that don't have this issue though. I'm not sure but I think this may have been one of the things improved upon in the hacked firmwares that are available for the Pioneers

[bac]

Most MTK players suffer this problem, it's not unusual, we have been lucky to have some available recently that don't have this issue though. I'm not sure but I think this may have been one of the things improved upon in the hacked firmwares that are available for the Pioneers

Quite a few manufacturers (e.g. LG, Philips, Yamada, Siemenssen) have implemented support for Packed Bitstream and some other brands can have such support hacked into their firmware. This would seem to indicate that Mediatek must have released an updated reference firmware at some point with this capability.

So far, no one has been able to successfully hack the requisite code into Pioneer firmware.

Shame on you, Pioneer!