Quick Review

I bought the Pioneer DV 400 after I read the very comprehensive and informative review above, however my experience was different. I just bought a new 2MP Samsung M8 and wanted a player that would upscale to 1080p. Before I bought the Pioneer, I was using an old Panasonic S29 and an ancient Sony 730P. Both were connected via component.

The first thing I noticed when I hooked up the Pioneer was that the sound sucked compared to my other two players. I checked the manual and found that the 400 model only has a 24bit/96 KHZ Audio DAC compared to 24bit/192 for both my Sony and Panasonic. What that means is that movies & CD's will not sound as crisp and sharp and the volume will be lower.

The picture quality is decent, the same as my 5 year old Sony. The edge the Pioneer has is up converting to 1080p. As both my other players are old and can't up convert, for fair comparison I played the same disc on my Xbox 360. I plugged in the HDMI cable and waited to be impressed. Frankly, it sucked. The Xbox 360 (connected via VGA) picture was massively better than the Pioneer. I mean HUGE difference.
Up conversion was a disappointment.

Another issue that I faced was that the included FREE HDMI cable was messed up. The picture and sound would 'crackle' after every 10 secs. Btw when comparing with the Xbox I used another better HDMI cable as the included was screwed.

The USB is a great feature and I believe that no modern DVD player should come without one. Playing a couple of Avi movies, the picture was choppy.. Too sharp at some places and too blurly at others. It felt like a poorly encoded VCD. Nothing HD about it at all, infact sub standard definition.

The remote is pretty good, layout is very convenient. Color makes it look cheap though, even if you buy a unit in black the remote is a standard white.

All in all I'm not impressed with this unit, feel like I threw good money down the drain. I can't return it otherwise I would. If you really want to go for a Pioneer, better look at the 600 model.

As far as me, I'll stick to using my 5 year old Sony.