According to the manual the pause live t.v feature on this player only works on analogue. I only have a sky input to mine, no analogue or freeview and after trying it out when first arrived confirmed this to be so.

However have now got a new t.v which has a S-Video scart and have discovered on another forum today that by connecting the DVR to this scart the pause live t.v function now works.

I'm well chuffed

does the pause live tv not work when using the integrated digital tuner?

Not according to the manual, it says it works with analogue only. I can't test it out on the digital tuner as have no input other than sky, but presuming that seeing as it now works for that I would think it would work for the digital tuner as well if connected to t.v through s-video/rgb scart.

I'm really confused by all this.

I'm thinking of buying the 440hx-s. I will use the inbuilt freeview tuner only, no sky or any other external box. I will connect it to my Sony TV using the Scart cable.

Can I pause live tv or not? How does the connection to the TV (which is only for monitoring the machine's output) affect whether you can pause live tv or not?

Thanks.

The short answer is Yes you can Pause Live TV on the Pioneer range however it's been implemented really oddly:

* Pioneer like most Hard Disk/DVD Recorders is designed to act more like a VCR not PVR (i.e - it doesn't record constantly).

* Just pressing the Pause button does nothing. You have two methods to pause live TV:

1. Press Record, Play then Pause - PLTV job done, this is all Pause on PVRs does, you can then rewind/fast forward like any other PVR but you're actually recording, it' not a buffer (Toshiba's have a proper PLTV buffer).

For the majority of people this is all you can get, this also works on the analogue tuner.

2. There is also a PLTV button which they advertise as a feature. However due to some very complicated reason I forget it does not use either internal digital or analogue tuner.

You press the PLTV button and it starts recording from "the tuner built into your TV" and only via Scart (not much use then if you use it's component connection, like me) and pauses the picture. This doesn't work for me for reasons I've not been able to work out but frankly the concept so rubbish so I don't bother.

The manual only states "it only works with analogue TVs tuners" as it presumes most people only have an analogue tuner in their TV, agreed in the days of IDTV that's stupid.

Why would I want to watch use my TVs tuner when I have a tuner built into the Pioneer??? Answer they consider it a VCR (if you will) so don't expect you to use it all the time.

There are lots of posts about this over at AVForums.com which explain it better than I can.

So yes it can pause live TV but not in the usual manner. The 540 is also designed this way, it's the one I have.
Last edited by bradavon : 15-02-2007 at 13:37

I finally got that question sorted and it actually works really well.

The PLTV button on the Pioneer does work with a digital tuner as long as you are linked to the TV via a scart plugged into a TV that supports Smartlink. You're right - it somehow utilises the channel that the TV is on but what appears to happen is that it senses thru the Scart the channel you are watching and then switches on, tunes the Pioneer to the same channel and records it - all with the push of one button. I think it's a pretty nifty feature and works well.

Whether it's actually using your TV's tuner or the one built in I'm not sure, but at the end of the day, who cares if all you're doing is making sure you don't miss a show because the phone rings?

That's it Smartlink. I'd still prefer the far simpler method taken by all PVRs and the Toshiba HD/DVD Recorders and that is a buffer that simply uses the internal tuner.

None of this OTT Smartlink Scart nonsense.