DVD Recorder Review: Pioneer PRV-LX1 DVD
If you have taken that big step from creating an occasional video on the side, to full-time video production, you have to work efficiently. If you are the sole owner and operator of a boutique production house, work at a local cable access facility, college or corporate media center, anything that can make your workflow more efficient is worth a close look. The PRV-LX1 is worth that look. The PRV-LX1 is a professional stand-alone DVD video recorder designed to create DVDs as easily as using a video tape recorder.
Weighing in at about 31 pounds, the PRV-LX1 is more at home in a rack than in the living room. The unit has the familiar dark-gray color and design as the very popular PVR series of Sony professional Betacam products. Coincidence or a little market coat-tailing?
The standard model comes with one DVD writer, a 120GB internal hard drive and a remote control used primarily for video playback control. Our unit came equipped with an optional second DVD writer that can be added for DVD duplication (no, you cannot make "backups" of copy-protected titles on this system). To take full advantage of chapter titling and other text entry and editing features, you can use a standard USB keyboard and mouse along with a VGA and Video monitor.
Like most pro systems, the PRV-LX1 has lots of features, capabilities and options. The front panel looks like a high-end VTR. Transport buttons are large, illuminated and have a solid feel, clearly ready to receive the punching pros dish out. Large, bright LEDs display the timecode for each of the DVD players. While the number of buttons is sparse, they allow quick access to all the main functions.
A glance at the rear will have you calculating the trips to Radio Shack for new A/V connectors. The PRV-LX1 can receive most popular video and audio sources, live or from tape. Video inputs include composite, S-Video, component and DV (FireWire). Audio inputs include balanced (XLR) or unbalanced (RCA) analog sources as well as DV. The PRV-LX1 encodes to Dolby Digital. Outputs match the inputs, with the addition of PCM/Digital audio out for Dolby digital, including 5.1 surround sound.
We pushed the power button and heard a familiar whir and a post-code beep: this is really a computer in a VTR box. During the 30-second boot process, we noticed an "x" on the GUI displayed on the VGA screen that told us that this machine is running some flavor of Linux.
Still, beyond booting, the box does not behave much like a computer. Pioneer lives up to its one-button claim. Once you've reviewed the user manual, you really can burn a DVD-R/RW from an external source or from the internal hard disk drive (HDD) by pressing just the Rec button. Simply connect your A/V source, select it in the PRV-LX1 video setup menu, choose the HDD, the DVD writers or both as your destination, cue your source material and you are ready.
If you record clips to the HDD first, you can perform basic editing. Be careful: this is destructive editing, meaning that it actually changes the files. There is no Undo! The device also performs TiVo-like HDD recording so you can pause a live feed.
