Pioneer DV-533-S

I was very excited when I bought the Pioneer DV-533-S DVD Recorder. It's a beautiful machine! The quality of recordings is great, and I could even get used to the multitude of various menus and buttons.

However, I can't get the TV Guide functionality to work. I live in Southern Ontario, and I get cable, so it should work. I've tried for 3+ weeks, with various postal codes etc. The straw that broke the camel's back was the fact that even though I kept setting the time (and what a painful process that is - you have to go through setting all the channels too), every time the unit powered off, the time jumped ahead by 5 hours. Tech support just told me that this is because the TV Guide is not working properly. Their solution: (1) keep trying different postal codes in my area. (2) keep resetting the clock every time I turn it on. I pointed out that (2) wouldn't work because you can't make a manual timer recording without powering off the machine. So suggestion (3) was the best: offset my timer recordings by 5 hours so that they would record properly. I'm not making this up - this is the advice from Pioneer tech support.

There is absolutely no way of turning off the TV Guide functionality. I thought maybe if I told it that I don't have cable or antenna that it would leave me alone - nope, it still does the EPG (trying to get the TV Guide information) thing all the time.

I'm so disappointed, especially based on the amount of money this baby cost me, and the fact that I always thought Pioneer was a great brand name. I'm getting ready to take it back to the store.

We just bought this Pioneer DV-533-S DVD player today after much thought and it's brilliant. Currently $399 in Australia with 5 DVDs. Looks wonderful, slim and unobtrusive. Has all the outputs you could want including optical, coaxial and component video. Combines all the features that are found in players in this price range including zoom. We compared all the available brands in this range and this one trounces them all. No complaints, just happy viewing so far.