My dad bought a Pioneer DVR440HXS at the weekend and asked me to have a look at it yesterday as he's struggling with it. I had a good read through the manual but I've still got a few questions...

1. Power on/off: it seems to take a long time to come out of or go into standby (around 20 seconds maybe?) is this normal? It doesn't seem to always "force" the TV to switch to the AV channel either (my dad has a Skybox plugged into another scart socket so i wondered if the two STBs were "fighting" for the TV )

2. Is there any way to take off the adverts in Guideplus?

3. What do the different colours mean in the Guideplus grid (eg. Channel Five is displayed in Blue, some other channels are in dark green, and others in light green).

4. We tried pausing the live tv and it just said it "can't record" but I couldn't figure out why? There was something set in the timer for later on so does this prevent timeshifting?

4. Sometimes the 440 comes out of standby into A.TV mode (even when previously it was in D.TV) - is this normal?

Is there a sort of "Dummies Guide to the 440" available anywhere on the net? The manual seems a bit awkward to read sometimes.

here are some answers to your questions:
1. It is normal that the unit takes some time to come out of standby.
2. There is no way to get rid of the adverts from Guide Plus+
3. The different colours correspond to different categories of programs. Have a look in the search area and the colours there will be the same as those in the grid, i.e. all films are coloured dark blue as in the search
4. In the manual i seem to remember that pause live tv only works with a certain SCART configuration. REad the manual and it should explain this.
5. I have no idea!

I don't understand the second point you are making in 1 could you elaborate a bit please??

Hope these get you going a bit. The 440 can be a bit awkward to start with but it is actually a fantastic bit of kit when you get used to it.

Many thanks for the info - I'll pass all this on.


Okay, my explanation was a bit rubbish, sorry!

Here's an example...

440 is connected to AV1 Scart.
Skybox is connected to AV2.

TV is on BBC1 (internal analogue tuner), press POWER on the Sky remote and the TV jumps to AV2 and shows the Sky page, press POWER again on the Sky remote (Sky goes into standby) and the TV returns to BBC1.

TV is on BBC1 (analogue tuner again), press POWER on the 440 remote - sometimes the TV switches to AV1, sometimes it doesn't ... I couldn't work out why sometimes this didn't work (I wondered if this was due to the TV/DVD mode setting on the remote?).

If we're watching the 440 on AV1 and we power up the Sky box then TV switches to AV2. If however we're watching Sky and power up the 440 then it DOESN'T switch to AV1 - so it's like Sky over-rides the 440 and forces the TV to always switch to AV2. Manually forcing the TV to display AV1 also just shows the Sky page as well (like the Skybox over-rides the 440 on that too).

The reason why it'd be nice for the 440 to "force" the TV onto AV1 is so my dad can record Sky progs onto the HD as well as freeview - I checked, and this did work (record from line 1 input) but there's nothing on screen to show that it's doing this.

I double-checked all the scart cables and everything seemed okay. I guess it could be something odd with the TV though, it's an old Panasonic CRT.


He's slowly getting the hang of it, I think he was just a little bit shocked by the size of the manual! It's a bit of a steep learning curve going from VHS to a PVR.
Last edited by fmrl : 29-01-2007 at 16:23

Ok now i see the problem. It sounds like a problem on the TV. Most PVRs send an signal on a certain PIN on the scart lead. This allows the TV to sense when it is being powered on. If the TV only switches sometimes it sounds like there may be a dodgy connection (possibly on the scart cable it's self or on the TV). To find out which it is, try switching the scarts round on the TV and have a play to see what happens when powering on each unit.

Also i would think that the TV has a priority of sensing the signal on 2 scarts at the same time which may explain why if you are watching sky and then power up the 400 there is no change.

I know the manual is huge, i downloaded the PDF from the web, it's a lot easier to search that with adobe

Have fun!

Cheers for the tips, I'll have another go at it this weekend.

How have you connected the Sky box to the 440 for recording ? If you have used the Sky's vcr scart then aren't you limiting yourself to recording in composite instead of rgb ?

Also, do both tv scarts support rgb ?

Not sure why you would want the tv to switch over to the 440's scart when you switch it on. That would mean that if you setup a timer recording on the 440's internal tuner, and are watching something else on Sky, the tv would switch over when the 440 turned itself on. I'm glad mine doesn't do that!
Last edited by Cobson : 31-01-2007 at 10:13