A womans view.... (Pioneer DV 717)

Member Name: lizzii.

Product:	Pioneer DV 717
Date:	02/05/04 (45 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Easy to use, excellent features

Disadvantages: Quite expensive, but worth every penny

The time was September 1999, a conversation took place between my husband and me, he told me what he wanted....I looked at him blankly and said 'what the hell is a DVE', he corrected my ignorance, 'OK, so what the hell is a DVD'...our lives have never been the same.

I had always loved watching videos, but this new fangled concept was a little beyond me. He had convinced me that we really should get one and he had chosen the DV-717, which meant absolutely zilch to my non-technical brain. He explained that we could watch ALL the latest films because it was multi-regional!!! He smiled smugly as he listed all the films I had wanted to watch for ages but had been unable to because they were only available in the US. He said we would have films that had not long been released at the British cinema...I pushed him out of the door with the power of a woman on Prozac and told him not to come home until he had the DV-whatever it's called in his grubby little mitts.

As I have mentioned I am in no way a technical buff, but after just one hour of careful instruction I knew how to use every feature of our new toy, which in laymans terms means it must be really easy to use.

There are a helluva lot of buttons on the quite large remote control, but when you know what all the little symbols mean, and you realise that it won't bite you if you touch the wrong one, you are well on the way to becoming a pro. If I'm honest, and I don't know if it's just a woman thing, but I actually use very few of the buttons. As long as I can stop the DVD, and restart it exactly where it was stopped, forward, rewind and manouvere through the menus I'm happy, but that is not to say all the features are a complete waste as my husband uses pretty much all of them.

The look of the DV-717 is very stylish, and comes in a gorgeous champagne colour and the standard graphite grey. The tray that pops out to put the disc in is solid and you
know that it will take years of 'ins and outs' before it is detrimental to the internal mechanism.

I can't compare our model to any others because I don't know about them, but I do know that the DV-717 is a little gem, and although it is close to the £500, if you have the extra cash then this is the one to get.

Summary: