This review is now outdated. Since I'm now a hardware reviewer for DVD Times, a cleaned-up and revised version of this review is available at that site.

The following review is left here for completeness only.

Intro

The DV-490V is the latest affordable upscaling DVD player from the optical video disc veterans at Pioneer. At about £130, it's by far less expensive than the top-of-the-line DV-989AVi-S (which is at the very least five times the price). It also promises the same "Dual PureCinema Progressive Scan" which is of course, not the case on this budget player. While the top-of-the-line models use proprietary solutions, this affordable player uses Mediatek deinterlacing and scaling.

A version which is supposedly identical, except for the addition of DVD-Audio and SACD support, is also available - the DV-696AV. The price for this extra feature is an additional £30 on top of this player's £130 price tag. Since I don't have any DVD-Audio or SACD discs, this review concerns itself with the DV-490V.

The player features upscaling to 720p and 1080i HD resolutions via the HDMI output, plays JPEG, MP3, WMA and DivX computer files that have been burned onto disc, as well as the usual video output options: Component Progressive Scan, Composite video, and RGB via SCART.

Superficially, the player comes in either a silver or black finish and is nice and thin. Because of supply issues at Pioneer UK, I had a silver player for reviewing.

Remote Control

At first, this looks like the exact same "non expensive" remote control Pioneer have been using for a good while with their cheaper players. And there's nothing wrong with that at all, because it works perfectly. (It's actually a lot nicer than the remote that ships with the top-of-the-range players, which feature an annoying joystick and jog control instead of nice buttons, but I digress). This remote however, has received an upgrade in the way of nice, squishy buttons that depress easily. It has a Power button, and Open/Close button (a very welcome addition), as well as buttons for "Home Menu", Zoom, Display, and Audio, Subtitle, Angle, and the usual others.

Next page >>

On the next page, I go through the available picture tweaks featured on the DV-490V.

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