Has anyone looked at Pioneer DVD recorders as pass-through devices using their comb filters? I've seen a bunch of threads on Panasonic recorders, but a non-adjustable filter is not appealing to me. I'm looking at in particular the DVR-540/543/640 series and the DVR-531/532/533/633 series because they have an adjustable filter and adjustable noise reduction. Has anyone used any of these particular models (or know of others with adjustable 3D Y/C and NR)?

I've owned both the PRV-9000 and DVR-7000 recorders (same model just pro vs consumer) that (are supposed to) have adjustable 3D Y/C and NR, but I'm pretty sure they had broken firmware. Adjusting the settings had absolutely no effect.

do they also have DNR functions? Most comb filters have limited flash memory and allow DNR or 3D, not both at the same time.

Yes, the models I listed have both 3D Y/C and separate adjustable YNR and CNR available in the menu just like on the later LD players.

The manuals don't say anything about them being either/or.

give it a try. disable all DNR and use Y/C only.

I don't have either of those anymore.

More specifically, everything was stuck at default settings.
The comb filter was stuck in mid-range 3D mode. Turning 3D up or down didn't affect the level of 3D comb filtering. Disabling AGC didn't disable AGC. YNR and CNR had no effect. It was like they forgot to enable the ability to make changes in the firmware.

Did you make test recordings on the units to check the results of changing the settings? It's possible they only change for the actual MPEG-2 encode and not the passthrough output.

I made a few recordings but nothing to explicitly test the settings. The manual described being able to preview the settings changes, so I assume that means via the passthrough. Anyway, it's too late for those two models, I'm wondering about the others I mentioned.

I once had the DVR-LX70D. Very basic Faroudja Genesis processing, nothing special. Its 3D comb filter was great though.

OK, so I finally got a DVR-531 for a little more than I wanted to pay. However, I've played around with it briefly and I'm actually impressed. It has 5 levels to the 3D Y/C with the extremes being full 2D and very aggressive 3D. One notch above full 2D seems about right for maximum resolution and minimal artifacts.

It also has chroma and luma NR available. I haven't tested these out yet.

Test setup 1:
LJR-I >DVR-531>DVDO VP50>Sony Bravia LCD
Very good results though a bit "grainy." Turning on "super bit mapping" on the Sony helped.

Test Setup 2:
LD-S2>DVR-531>Sony Trinitron SDTV
Excellent results. Probably best I've seen. Graininess that was seen in the LCD is not visible on the CRT.



Full impressions to follow...