DeViniDly a good buy. (Pioneer DV 360-S)

Member Name: The Duke

Product:	Pioneer DV 360-S
Date:	28/12/03 (930 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Multi-region, Price, Lots of easy to use features

Disadvantages: None so far!

After getting sick of using my PC to watch DVDs, I decided that it was about time I joined the 21st century and get myself a "proper" DVD player. My selection was pretty easy as I have been using a Pioneer DVD-ROM in my PC for the last 3 years, and its reliability and ability to handle a wide variety of types of media had always been impressive.

A few months ago, I noticed that Amazon were selling Pioneer DVD players, and I surfed over and browsed the site. I knew which features I wanted and before too long, I had narrowed my selection down to the Pioneer DV-360S, which is a nice slimline silver DVD player.

Upon delivery of my new toy, I wasted no time in setting it up in the main living room and the entire process took less than five minutes. Unpacking the DVD player, unwrapping a separate SCART lead (not included in the box), setting the player where I wanted it and then plugging in the power lead and connecting the DVD player to the television via the SCART lead were all extremely easy to do, and my television "found" the signal from the lead and I was all ready to watch DVDs at my leisure.

If you don't have a free SCART socket on the back of your telly, you can also connect the player via S-Video or even using an ordinary audio/visual (A/V) cable. An A/V cable is supplied in the box and the manual explains how to set your player up using this.

The enclosed instruction manual explains everything well with good use of diagrams for those of you who may be less familiar with setting up audio/visual equipment, although some of the technical jargon could still be complicated, but the manual does try and keep this to an absolute minimum.

As is becoming more and more common these days for DVD players, the Pioneer is capable of reading a large range of media types. The manual says that it's capable of reading DVD-Video, DVD-R and DVD-RW but not DVD-Audio, DVD-RAM or DVD-ROM. It can, however, read au
dio and video CDs, Fujicolor and Kodak CDs and CD-R and CD-RW (recordable and rewritable CDs). Sometimes a DVD player will have trouble reading some of the different types of media (typically, it's usually the recordable/rewritable types), but the Pioneer has recognised everything that I've tried to play on it thus far.

The remote control unit is a nice size, and the buttons are well spaced and not too small. It feels fairly comfortable in the hand and is not fiddly to use. Batteries are included. A handy feature of the remote was the inclusion of a "Subtitle" button for easy access to the subtitles for those who are hard of hearing or make frequent use of the subtitles feature available on lots of DVDs. Most of the features you would expect from a DVD player (play, pause, scan forward and backward etc.) and some of the non-standard features (zoom, multi-angle etc.) are also available easily from the remote.

As well as playing ordinary DVDs, the Pioneer is also able to show JPEG images (these are the type of image typically produced by digital cameras) and if you have some pictures on CD, you can set up a slide show or browse your pictures. This is easily accomplished, and if you are in any doubt how to achieve this, the manual explains everything. The only gripe I had with this was that I thought it took the DVD player a while to decode the images for viewing. Apart from that, the image quality was good and the slideshow feature (where the DVD player will show all your images in order automatically) was a nice touch.

Another feature of the DV-360S is the ability to play mp3 and WMA (Windows Media) files. These are audio files usually associated with PC computers, and you can have many of them on one CD. Using this was easy again, the on screen GUI (graphical user interface) makes things very easy and the manual again is excellent if you get stuck. The sound quality will obviously depend on what speaker set up you have, b
ut through my standard stereo television, I found the quality to be more than adequate for occasional use.

The most important thing though is the sound and picture quality. I've connected mine to my flatscreen, widescreen television using a SCART lead and the picture quality is excellent. Obviously, picture quality also depends on the television and sound quality will depend on how you've set up the sound. But the image is definitely a lot sharper than when I was playing videos through the same television. The sound was again much better, even through my TV speakers. If you're looking to get better quality of sound from the player, there's a digital (optical) output which could be used for recording your CDs and a DTS output for connection to an A/V receiver for multi-channel sound (5.1).

You'll find a full list of specifications at: http://www.pioneer-eur.com/eur/product_detail.jsp? product_id=3728&taxonomy_id=45-6 4 as well as a detailed picture of the player and the remote.

One last thing worth noting is that despite the fact it's labelled on the back as a Region 2 DVD player (DVDs are split into regions with Region 1 being America and Canada, Region 2 being Europe, Japan, South Africa and Middle East etc.) the DV-360S is actually a multi-region DVD player which means you can play DVDs from anywhere in the world, irrespective of what region they are encoded as.

Overall, I must say that I am extremely impressed with this DVD player. It may only be one of Pioneer's entry level DVD players, but it does everything I currently need a DVD player to do. At only £69.99 from Amazon (with free postage and packing at time of writing!), I think that this was an excellent buy. It's a simple design which is nice to look at, extremely easy to use and provides good picture and sound quality. For any person currently considering their first DVD player, you can do much worse than this.

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