Announcement

**Elie** · 6 March 2000, 19:14

Thanks Jerrold,

Hopefully this is the begining of great things to come at a cheaper price too

Regards,
Elie

**Jerry Jones** · 7 March 2000, 07:18

You need to be corrected on a couple of points, Kris.

You close your message by saying "Praise Panasonic."

Well--you're incorrect. It's Pioneer that's
introduced the DVR-1000... not Panasonic.

Elite Video advises the DVDs produced by the
DVR-1000 by Pioneer will, indeed, play on
newer DVD machines, making the product
suitable for kiosks, demos or trade shows.

Moreover, Elite Video describes the digital
video quality as "flawless." I won't take
the word of either one of you, frankly.

I won't decide until I see a live demo with
my own eyes. So I won't be buying one.

The second thing you didn't do in your
post was describe your perception of the
Cebit Ricoh demonstration... and the
video quality produced by that product,
which does--indeed---seem promising.

Await your description of that.

**KRISW** · 7 March 2000, 08:44

AAARGG.

Pioneer. Sorry.

*where did I get Panasonic ? Dumb look*

Sorry again.

Rest assured I _did_ see the PIONEER 1000.

I'll give you an idea how the -at time pretty commical- discussion went in view of the picture quality :

Video guy : but the image is bad
Pioneer dude : no, it's great.
choir of video guys : NO. IT'S BAD.
Pioneer dude : well, it IS a prototype.
Video guy : but you said earlier this is a release model ?
Pioneer dude : errrr..... euh ..... well it is. But it's NTSC and you loose the image quality in the Pal convertor.
Video guy : ah yes ? I know that convertor. Have it myself. No way it produces that kind of crappy output. Why don't we look at the image in NTSC then ?
Pioneer dude : errr... we can't. The monitor won't allow it.

here, several video smartasses started smiling, since more then one of them knew the used (Sony) display and they all agreed the Sony had no such problems. In the end, the 1000 was hooked up to the display without convertor, and we looked at a horrible grainy NTSC image.

Really, the picture was GRAINY. Looked like a worn out SVHS tape. Or, like a guy who's personal opinion on Video is above suspicion to me, like a MEDIOCRE VHS TAPE.

Granted. We were looking with our noses on the tube, so no way we looked at it at reasonable viewing distance. But when I do that with my own humble TV-set and my DVD player, the image is very much better then anything we saw at the Pioneer demo.

And the main problem was probably Pioneer invited Prosumers to Pro's. These guys look to IMPROVE on their video quality. Every single one of the was working with DVCAM (not Mini DV). So yes, this was a "difficult" public.

The Pioneer guy had to agree in the end, and he said he couldn't exclude the possibility of the device being faulty. HMMMMMMM.

-It was at this demo I saw an RT2000 perform in real life. Nice card, has to be said-.

You say you don't take my word for it and I can only fully agree there. You _have_ to see it for yourself.

Maybe it's just me.

Maybe the Pioneer guy _had_ a faulty unit, I don't know. I don't THINK so since if that would be the case, first of all it would be a _very_ stupid representative to use a faulty unit and then deny it was producing a crummy picture and secondly, HE ARGUED about the fact the image was bad as we ALL agreed it was pretty bad.

It was clear the Pioneer representative was poorly trained in the matter, not able to defend his product against a bit less tech-ignorant public, so again, he _might_ have had to defend a crummy unit.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder I guess, but the stuff I saw couldn't persuade me in the least. I _will_ have a second look the moment the oppurtunity comes just to make sure I wasn't victim of a very badly planned demo. If you get to see one before me (quite likely : the PAL versions will come only later this year, and I don't think Pioneer will be showing that NTSC 1000 here again after that fiasco)

As for the Ricoh, ever been at Cebit?
Not being important (or big) enough, there was NO WAY I could get close enough to fully evaluate the image quality that was produced there. In all honesty, that wasn't the point of the demo either. The point was that Ricoh was capable of producing a DVD+RW device that produced a DVD, standard enough to be used on a normal CURRENT DVD player. End of story.

I may have unwantingly have been a bit blurry here : Ricoh did show a DVD+RW WRITER. NOT a stand-alone DVD-Recoder like the Pioneer is.

What _did_ bother me was this : Ricoh's DVD+RW is a of a Philips design. Philips THEMSELVES did not display anything "real", only a mookup(?) of their forthcoming DVD+RW writer, and the vague promise that it, together with a Pioneer-like device would materialize 3 or 4th quarter of this year (depending on what guy you asked). No solid date was set for either device, and least for the "joe average" public that I count myself to.

I didn't intended to make things _more_ unclear and I appologize for the Pioneer/Panasonic hickup. My only point(s) were these :

- the demo I personally saw of the 1000 was not great. AND it had the added problem it was incompatible with the existing user base.
To me _personally_, the machine is nearly useless for _my own goals_.

- the 1000 is the first of it's kind. A great technical achievement no doubt, but I'd advice against buying it now since I'm pretty sure we'll see better and more interesting machines in the very near future.

All views are stricktly personal, and mine should be regarded as such too.

Sorry for the unconvieniance,

Take Care,

Kris
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**KRISW** · 7 March 2000, 17:13

*grins*

I can top that. I actually saw the device working a month ago at a Panasonic presentation. By the way, Hi guys. Long time no see.

Two points :

1) it did not produce standard DVD's. It was not possible to use the recorded DVD's on any current DVD-player. *major let-down*
Panasonic talks about "minor changes in the EXISTING devices to allow playback" (meaning the PLAYERS, not their RECORDER). Yeah right. When pigs fly.

2) the image quality was.... errr .... bad. It was miles behind the quality we're used to when using commercial movie DVD's, and it was even a great deal worse then any normal, decent SVHS deck's output. *capital letdown*

BTW, I was fortunate enough to see the Ricoh demo at Cebit, where they showed their prototype of a recordable DVD producing a video DVD on a PC (the DVD recorder was actually a Philips, that I'm sure of) and play it back on several currently available, bog-standard DVD stand-alone players.

Praise Panasonic for being the first ones to actually try and make this kind of tech available to the general public, but I'm sure I won't be buying a "1000" right now.

Take Care,

Kris.
------------------------

Announcement

Recordable DVD: New DVR-1000!

Recordable DVD: New DVR-1000!

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