pioneer 433mxev arriving saturday!

Can't wait! I'll post some screen shots when I get it set up and initial impressions.

Kit I'll be "attempting" to connect:

Sony DVP900-NS dvd player
Denon 3802 av amp
Sky digibox

At the moment all are connected to amp via svideo (the sky uses an rgb-to-svideo converter).

I also plan to create a HCPC (HTPC for any yanks out there) based on the Shuttle SS51G. I think I may get the best dvd performance this way by connecting the HCPC to the plamsa via the DVI input.

 

Hi, my 1st visit to the site as a member, i'm also getting my *Plasma* saturday..cant wait......i'll post pics as soon as i get it up and running......

pioneer mxe43''.....

Oh..my kit :- Monitor Audio Silver 8i cinema pack, rel q201e,sony dvp735,Sony strva555 amp, Arcam A85 amp, Arcam cd 92, Panasonic vcr,panasonic sky box, and.....Pioneer mxe 43'' Plasma Display

 

DJBlade

You actually find time to watch TV in Halifax, I understand that Women outnumber men 3 to 1

what a great night out it is, I have been quite a few times

 

I wish...........

 

Hiya,

You folks that have bought MXE's...

Where did you get to look at them before you bought? I am looking at getting an MXE but I would REALLY like to see one put through it's paces before parting with the cash.

Just wondered cos this set is the non commercial one isn't it so I am curious.

Ta.

Lennyz

 

My girlfriend works for microwarehouse, they had some in to demonstrate to customers and so I had a look.

Also got it at cost

 

So, now she's served her purpose, you'll be knockin' 'er on the 'ead, right?

 

I'm upgrading her to a 32DD version

 

Hi,

Last year a friend of mine upgraded GirlFriend 1.0 to Wife 1.0 and found that it's a memory hog leaving very little system resources for other applications. He is only now noticing that Wife 1.0 also is spawning child-processes which are further consuming valuable resources. No mention of this particular phenomenon was included in the product brochure or the documentation, though other users have informed him that this is to be expected due to the nature of the application. Not only that, Wife 1.0 installs itself such that it is always launched at system initialization where it can monitor all other system activity. He's finding that some applications such as PokerNight 10.3, BeerBash 2.5, and PubNight 7.0 are no longer able to run in the system at all, crashing the system when selected (even though they always worked fine before).

At installation, Wife 1.0 provides no option as to the installation of undesired Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw 55.8 and BrotherInLaw Beta release. Also, system performance seems to diminish with each passing day.

The features he'd like to see in the upcoming Wife 2.0 include:

* A "Don't remind me again" button

* Minimize button

* An install shield feature that allows Wife 2.0 to be installed with the option to uninstall at anytime without the loss of cache and other system resources.

* An option to run the network driver in promiscuous mode which would allow the system's hardware probe feature to be much more useful.

I myself decided to avoid all of the headaches associated with Wife 1.0 by sticking with GirlFriend 2.0. Even here, however, I found many problems. Apparently you cannot install Girlfriend 2.0 on top of GirlFriend 1.0. You must uninstall GirlFriend 1.0 first. Other users say this is a long-standing bug which I should have been aware of. Apparently the versions of GirlFriend have conflicts over shared use of the I/O port. You think they would have fixed such a stupid bug by now. To make matters worse, the uninstall program for GirlFriend 1.0 doesn't work very well leaving undesirable traces of the application in the system.

Another thing that sucks -- all versions of GirlFriend continually pop-up little annoying messages about the advantages of upgrading to Wife 1.0

BUG WARNING!

Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources.

BUG WORK-AROUNDS

To avoid the above bug, try installing Mistress 1.1 on a different system and never run any file transfer applications such as LapLink 6.0. Also, beware of similar shareware applications that have been known to carry viruses that may affect Wife 1.0.

Another solution would be to run Mistress 1.0 via a UseNet provider under an anonymous name. Here again, beware of the viruses which can accidentally be downloaded from the UseNet."

 

very old!

 

sorry

Still makes me smile though

 

Waited in all day saturday and it didn't come

It is now being delivered Wednesday

 

Sorry to hear that.

Who did you buy it from?

Im debating whether to get a commercial plasma as they seem to be slightly cheaper ( no Tuner) but connection problems are my concern

Adrian

 

I got it cost from an it hardware company my girlfriend works for. Try Joe at tmfsolutions, around 3800 if my memory serves me. I wouldn't be too worried about connection problems, do a search here and you'll get loads of info.

what sources do you have

 

Just arrived this morning. Plugged the 5002 card in and just attached it to my denon 3802, the kybox goes through an rgb-svideo converter and the sony dvp-ns900 outputs svideo. After hunting around for a power lead (it doesn't come with one, you can use a pc monitor power lead) I got it working.

I'll post a better review soon but through svideo the picture was great!

bbc1 wide thjrough sky produdec an excellent picture (comparing to a 36fs70 with drc). played some dvds through svideo

monsters inc - blown away!
sleepy hollow - excellent - greats blacks

I tried sleepy hollow because it is a very dark film and wanted to see the blacks.

 

off to get some rca/bnc leads to test the component out

 

Hi,

Glad its arrived, and your havving fun with it.

Just makes me even more envious.....

Hope to get a better review later.

Shouldnt you update, or even add a signature file listing your kit?


Have fun you lucky blighter

 

After much research (thanks Joe) I decided to take the plunge and purchase the Pioneer 433MXE plasma. To those not in the know, the 433MXE is similar to the 433HDE but without the tuner. There are other differences but I won’t go into that now.

Arrival

The box turned up on Wed 30th October 2002 at 08:00 along with the PDA-5002 video card – more on that later. It weighed about 40kg and so wasn’t too difficult to get into the house and simply cutting off the nylon straps allowed the top of the box to be lifted off.

Contents

The plasma came with a simple remote control, some cable ties, a couple of manuals, batteries (for the remote) and the PDA-5002 graphics card.

Graphics Card

The 5002 card allows extra inputs and slots in easily to the bottom of the plasma. To do this I had to place the plasma screen down on a table (covered with a blanket) and remove 2 small screws.

Feet

The plasma also came with 2 feet to allow it to be mounted on a table. The manual advises you not to use these feet free-standing but to bolt them to the surface. I found that this was not necessary as it seemed quite stable. I plan to purchase a wall mount in the future but until then the screen sits nicely on an Optimum AV300 glass stand.

Connections

One thing the box didn’t include was a power cable and so I used a spare pc monitor cable although I needed to swap the fuse to a 15Amp one. I have all my video sources going through my Denon 3802 and this outputs S-Video which I connected directly to the 5002 card which has an S-Video input.

First Impressions

After switching the beast on the screen came on to BBC1 widescreen via my Panasonic Sky Digibox RGB out through a JS-Tech RGB-Svideo converter. The picture was set to Wide which trimmed the top and the bottom off and so setting to “Full” corrected this. First impressions were very good; the picture was very bright, with high contrast levels and vivid colours. I needed to adjust the colour and brightness slightly to get the best picture and I’m sure I’ll be tinkering for weeks yet.

CRT Comparison

The plasma is to replace a Sony 36FS70 TV. This was the second Sony 36 inch monster I’ve had in as many years and the picture was excellent although the geometry was a bit suspect and I had a green tinge in the top left corner. This Sony set was the first to introduce DRC technology similar to the Philips Pixel-Plus gadgetry. Being a good 7 inches bigger (actually more as the Sony didn’t display 36 inches) I expected the plasma to really show off those digital artefacts and on the lower bit-rate channels they were definitely more evident than on the Sony. On the higher bit rate channels such as the BBC, News, Sport and Movie channels the picture was extremely solid and much, much better than I had expected. I had not had the fortune of demo’ing this set with sky digital and the recent what hifi group test on plasmas got me a bit worried.

DVD

My Sony NS900 was up next connected as the others via S-Video. It may sound like S-Video is a compromise as RGB is generally thought of as superior but it reduces my connection headache as I can switch everything through the Denon. First up was a Region One copy of Monsters Inc. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I was completely blown away by the picture. I played the chapter near the end with the chase sequence in the “door factory”. Movement and colour (after tweaking) were realistic and vibrant. It really felt like a cinema experience and it required me to actually look round the screen following the action. Next up was a Region One copy of Sleep Hollow. Reading lots of reports comparing the Pioneer and the Panasonic plasmas, the Panasonics often been preferred for their very deep blacks, I thought that this film may seem a bit washed out, but the blacks were very black and still able to show much of the detail thanks to the higher resolution of the Pioneer over the Panasonic.

DVD component

After I quick trip to Northwood Audio to get some BNC/RCA converters I connected the DVD player directly to the plasma via three components leads. The manuals were a bit unclear as to how many leads I should use and because I couldn’t find my Sony DVD player manual I guessed at three. I needed to change the DVD to output component and also change input 2 on the plasma to accept component instead of RGB (set to RGB produced a green picture). The picture was better, but not a whole lot. The Sony DVD doesn’t output a progressive scan picture and so the plasma was left to do the de-interlacing. The component connections were going directly into the plasma and not through the 5002 card and so I guess the card did a lot of “magic” to the s-video signal to make it look at good. Saying that, I was using crappy phono leads to connect the component signal (the type you get free with your pc) and so this probably made a difference. Pushing info of the plasma remote showed the signal coming in and on component it correctly identified 525i and via s-video it was NTSC, whereas a Region Two disc of Gladiator showed 620i

X-BOX

Switching to my s-video NTSC xbox again produced an excellent picture and playing Halo really immersed you into the game. I’ve ordered a high-definition pack and will then be able to drive the plasma with a progressive scan image.

Options

The Menu system is easy to use and shows a number of tabbed-pane menus for each of the 5 inputs. The options on the input depend on the type of the input and the signal going through it.

Lip-Sync

Through s-video there is a slight lip sync delay presumably due to the 5002 processing. This was corrected by simply adjusting the speaker distances on my Denon. There is also a setting on Region One DVDs going through component called PureCinema. This has settings of HQ, Standard and Off. When set to off “Standard progressive conversion” is used and when set to HQ, the system uses some fancy 24 frame-per-second pressive scan optimization (is this 3:2 pulldown?). The manual says that this may cause lip-sync problems but I could notice any.

Conclusion

This is probably to best Home Cinema purchase I’ve made. I haven’t a single bad word to say about this plasma – apart from 2 dead pixels (I might get my supplier to replace but I’m not sure they will and you can’t see them anyway). I would recommend anyone thinking about purchasing this plasma to definitely buy it. I also plan connect my PC to compare the DVD through a PC to that of my Sony. Connecting with a DVI cable appently gives an amazing picture, if it does prove a lot better I may build a small home cinema PC to permanently connect to the plasma.

My equipment

Pioneer 433MXE Plasma + PDA-5002 graphics Card
Sony DVP-NS900 DVD Player
Denon 3802 AV Amp
Panasonic Sky Digibox
2 x Mission 773e Floor-Standers
Mission 77C1 Centre Speaker
4 x Mission 77DS Rear Speakers
REL Q150E Sub

 

pic1

 

pic2

 

pic3

 

WhistlingDogg,

Congrats and good write-up.

Seeing your screen with the temporary feet on scares the **** out of me - I had mine shipped with the desktop stand. I just hope you don't have any clumsy folk/ kids/ pets in your house!

Power cable - yeah, funny that it doesn't come with one - I used an old PC lead too.

DVD component - the difference between S-Vid and component is very noticeable on static logos - e.g. on my Pioneer 656, when there is no disk in but the player is on, there is a magenta Pioneer logo. On S-Video, this has bleeding/ shadowing, but on component its pixel perfect. I agree when actually watching a film, its much less noticeable. Also, I read on the Key Digital plug-in card thread over at AVSForum that a video component signal into the plasma's connectors is only possible with the 5002 card in place. Without the 5002, the panel is just a PC monitor. So although you're cabling up to the panel's BNC inputs, the signal is actually processed by the 5002. Anyway, I think thats what I read!

Would be very interested to hear how you get on with a DVI input if you go down that route.

Congrats again - enjoy.

Phil

 

I have a mxe , got it from joe about 3 weeks ago , cant find this pure cinema mode though , it just doesnt have it on the menu , any thoughts guys?

 

It only appears when playing region 1 dvd's through component input2.

 

installer09,

Page 140 of the Technical Manual says you need the PDA-5002 and the option is available for NTSC input on the standard Setup menu (option "PURECINEMA", settings OFF (default), STANDARD and HQ).

Apparently it ... auto detects video signals transferred at 24 fps and converts them to a prog scan signal via a 2-3 pull down process.

I don't see it on mine (PAL inputs only)

Phil

 

Ive got the 5002 video card and my dvd player connected to input 2 with component leads , there is nothing in the standard set up menu or the intergrator mode. My denon 3800 is multi region so ive tried a number of region 1 disks , even set it to output raw ntsc still nothing.

 

The point zoom feature doesnt work either!

 

Sorted it , I turned the progresive scan off from my dvd player and it appeared , and the point zoom only works with a computer input.

 

installer09,

So what looks best - NTSC progressive directly from the player, or wiht the pulldown performed by the plasma under PURE CINEMA?

Is there any noticeable difference in lip-sync?

Phil

 

Havnt tried it as my player is progressive scan pal as well , and the pure cinema only works on ntsc , I assumed it would look better with prog scan from the dvd player as it has less processing I will give it a try though.