Pioneer DV-410V DVD Player

Performance
We connected the player to an LG Plasma HDTV, and connected via HDMI. The first steps were the usual test disc for patterns and video demonstrations. Thus this is where we encountered the GUI menu system of the player. We have something called initial settings, which is where we set the TV to 16:9, and audio out to Digital. You can optionally set the upscaling feature on here, which we did to full HD 1080p. In movies we used Ratatouille and Iron Man.

Then we put on a simple black and white grayscale pattern with 256 levels of grey from black to white. This is where the Pioneer started receiving its first points of praise. The menu has a video settings function, with brightness, gamma, sharpness etc. just like a TV, thus one can tweak to get a good image. The extreme blacks and whites were very much in control and quite intricately visible, with no clipping of dynamic range. Even in still photos of high detail, the player really comes out with very good detail in dark spots. In video demos, especially films that we saw, the player consistently belted out very vivid and crisp images in terms of light and dark sections.

With regard to color we realized that the player performs well here too. The colors are quite neutral and well set. There is not much dot crawl or other artifacts. Skin tones area are a tad redder and saturated, though not too much of an issue. In Ratatouille, the intense color was depicted quite well.

Where the player did lack, or rather was not really up to the mark was motion. Sometimes in fast moving scenes, like the Iron man flying frenzy being followed by the jet, artifacts were visible, like jaggies and a little blur. Beside the films, we ran the regular moving test patterns to see de-interlacing and how the player handles motion. There was a little blur as tested before.

There are some minor iffys also in the external usage aspect. The remote needs to be aimed absolutely directly at the IR receiever, which is positioned to the left of the tray. From Power On to eject and then Play, the DV410 took a little time, about 3-4 seconds more than usual.

Conclusion
At Rs. 6490, we are definitely impressed with the player, as the good points outweigh the cons, in number as well as extent. It does not have a fancy design, but definitely has nice video playback. It has a few minor quirks in motion, but not worse than the competition, and upscaled 1080p video does not look that bad. It is recommended for video enthusiasts who need something better than the run of the mill 5000 buck players out there.