Step 5 Remove the four screws on the sides of the drive that are holding it to the tray. Step 6 Detach the tray from the drive and secure it to your DVRupgrade drive in a similar fashion. Be careful not to touch the components on the bottom of the disk drive. Tighten screws securely, but do not overtighten the screws. Do not change the jumpers on the hard drive. Step 7 Re-insert drive into unit and secure as original drive was secured. Step 8 Reconnect the power connector and IDE cable. Step 9 Replace cover, reconnect all cables and start up your unit. After it fully boots, verify a successful installation by checking the System Information screen under Messages and Setup, and it will report the newly available increased recording capacity. Step 10 Proceed to the System Reset menus and perform a 'clear and delete everything.' to initialize your new drive. Then proceed with "Guided Setup" as you did when the unit was new. Congratulations, you are done! If you have any further questions, or encountered any problems during the installation, please contact us through our website at http://www.dvrupgrade.com/contactus.cfm. Your questions can also be answered on our forums at http://www.dvrupgrade.com/forums/. For additional resources (such as copies of these instructions, troubleshooting tips and links to community resources) please visit http://www.dvrupgrade.com/support/ Thanks again for purchasing your upgrade kit from DVRupgrade, the home of the original TiVo upgrade!
Toshiba SD-H400, RS-TX20, RS-TX60 and HUMAX DRT800 Note: Read all instructions first! Do not place your unit or its components on a carpeted floor while open. The internals of your unit contain sensitive electronic components that can be damaged by static electricity. Under no circumstances should you touch any component of the units power supply, even if the unit is unplugged; it has the potential to shock you. The drives included with your kit are pre-configured and jumpers are already set appropriately. DO NOT CHANGE JUMPER SETTINGS ON ANY DRIVE WE SUPPLY WITHOUT CONTACTING DVRupgrade FIRST!
DVRupgrade Kit Installation Instructions
Step 1 Using the supplied T-10 driver, remove the screws on the rear of the unit. Step 3 Remove the two screws to the left of the disk drive and the two screws to the right of the disk drive. Step 4 Disconnect the IDE CABLE and POWER CABLE from the disk drive. Connectors may be tight; gently wiggle until they come free - do not pry with tools or pull on wires of power cable. Be patient while doing this. You can gently lift the drive tray out while removing the cables if that makes things easier -- just don't pull too hard.
The SD-H400 also has four screws on the sides (two screws on each side) which need to be removed.
Step 2 Gently remove the cover. Visually inspect internals of unit. Note the power supply on the left side of the illustration - do not touch this or the white cables in the front or left of the unit; they are very delicate. Note the locations of the IDE CABLE, POWER CABLE and the four screws securing the bracket to the disk drive in the unit.
2004, 2007, DVRupgrade, Inc. v1.2

CNET PRODUCT REVIEWS

PIONEER DVR-533H-S
Pioneer gets just about everything right with the DVR-533H-S. Despite being no larger than most DVD players, this sleek hard drive/DVD recorder ($499 list) has a feature set longer than the marquee at a 24-screen megaplex. The main attraction is a premiere for the category: dual-layer compatibility, which allows the deck to record to DVDR DL media that holds nearly twice as much video (8.5GB) as a standard DVDR disc. The Pioneer DVR-533H-S packs in numerous other essentials, including TV Guides free electronic programming guide, easy-to-use menus, 30-second skip, high-speed video dubbing, impressive editing options, and a FireWire input the list goes on. Although its like-priced competitors include highly
DESIGN Pioneers HDD-DVD decks have always been smaller than those of the competition, and the DVR-533H-S is no exception; at 16.5 by 10 by 2.25 inches, its case is about an inch shorter and a few inches shallower than other recorders in its class. The silver-and-black front looks uncluttered yet offers plenty of control to people who misplace the remote; theres full menu control via a veway navigational keypad and an HDD/DVD toggle control, as well as play/pause/stop and record/one-touch record buttons. Flip open the small door on the bottom right and youll nd a set of A/V inputs for your digital camcorder or other external source, complete with S-Video and FireWire ports. The Pioneer DVR-533H-Ss busy remote is its major design aw, and it took us a few seconds to nd the keys we wanted among all the labels and icons. The clicker might stymie beginners, especially since many keys lack visible differentiation, but advanced users and universal-remote programmers will appreciate the one-touch access to the decks many functions. We liked the jumbo HDD and DVD buttons that switch the controls from one disc to the other, as well as dedicated keys for input select, which lets you cycle through the recorders various A/V inputs, and recording mode, which gives you one-touch control over the decks recording speed without having to dig into the setup menu. We do wish the oh-so-useful 30-second-skip button was a bit larger, and its functionality may initially throw people used to the standard skip from hacked TiVos or DVRs such as the Dish Player-DVR 942. Instead of simply jumping forward 30 seconds immediately, the device pauses for a second, allowing you to press the button repeatedly and add to the skip time, to as long as 10 minutes. The reverse-skip offers similar functionality in different time increments, beginning with 5 seconds. We ended up loving the adjustable skip, since many commercial breaks are exactly 2 or 3 minutes long, and once we got the hang of it, we were able to skip them with dead-on accuracy. Given that many

REVIEWED BY

Ben Patterson

EDITED BY

David Katzmaier

REVIEW DATE

August 30, 2005

RELEASE DATE

July 15, 2005
rated decks such Editors rating: as the Panasonic Excellent DMR-EH50 and the TiVo-powered Humax DRT800, out of 10 this Pioneers combination of features, thoughtful design, and overall value it costs a bit less the Panasonic and doesnt require a monthly fee as the Humax does make it the best DVD recorder weve tested so far.
DVD recorders wont skip at all, this anti-advertising feature is a big bonus. Pioneers onscreen display still looks a bit unpolished next to the slick menus of Sonys RDR-HX900, for example, but we found them highly functional and easy to follow. The DVD/HDD navigator, for instance, will display either four or eight titles at a time with thumbnails, and you can easily skip from one screen to the next. Theres also a wizard that takes you through the initial setup process and plenty of onscreen help in the form of messages at the bottom of the screen (which expert users are free to disable). We loved both the home menu, which provides a central place to nd all of the recorders many functions, and the step-bystep copying and nalization dialogs, which make burning programs from the hard drive to DVD a breeze. While novices might nd all the options bewildering at rst, the logical nature of the interface makes using the device to its full potential relatively easy. FEATURES The Pioneer DVR-533H-S offers the most complete feature package in its class. Its ability to record to dual-layer media means you can t nearly twice as much video on one disc. Using the longest-play SEP mode, the Pioneer DVR-533H-S can squeeze 18.5 hours onto a single DVD-R DL; higherquality SP allows 3 hours, 43 minutes. The downside is that DVD-R DL discs cost signicantly more than other media; at one store, we saw prices of $5.33 per DVD-R DL disc compared to $4.99 per DVD+R DL and as little as 48 cents per standard DVD-R. But DVD-R DL media just started becoming widely available, and prices will undoubtedly drop over the next few months. Note that the Pioneer cannot record to DVD+R/RW or DVD-RAM formats, but that isnt a huge deal since plus and minus media cost about the same. This decks 80GB HDD is good for about 35 hours of recording in SP mode, and while you cant record live two shows at once a feature reserved for cable and satellite DVRs or pause and rewind live TV la TiVo or Philipss

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HDRW720, you can press record any time to capture what youre watching. To pause, rewind or fast-forward the current recording, you must either press play or nd the recording in the menu and engage playback. The difference between always-on recording and manually pressing record is one thing that separates most DVD/HDD recorders from DVRs. To dub, you simply create playlists of titles to copy them from the hard drive to DVD or vice versa, and you can modify the titles, as well as menu thumbnails and appearance during nalization Pioneer offers a handful of styles. The High-Speed Copy mode dubbed a 2-hour SP-mode movie to disc in just 15 minutes. Unfortunately, if you want to take a title that was recorded at one speed and copy it at a different speed for example, to t a longer title to disc youll have to copy it in real time. There also a disc-archiving feature that takes a DVD (menus and all), archives it to the hard drive, and then copies it to a blank disc. The archiving went relatively quickly it took about 12 minutes to upload a 100-minute movie to the hard drive and 16 minutes to copy it to a new disc and you can even keep the archive le on the HDD and make multiple copies. Naturally, the Pioneer wont let you archive copy-protected DVDs. Both the HDD and DVD boast one-touch recording, and you can record to XP, SP, LP, EP, SLP, and SEP (10-hour) modes that offer various balances of video quality vs. drive/DVD space. The HDD offers an additional XP+ mode, which gives you superne, 15Mbps recordings (or the equivalent of 41 minutes of disk space compared to an hour in standard XP mode). Theres also a manual mode that lets you ne-tune the recording speed in 32-step increments, perfect for tting, say, a 130-minute movie onto a DVD at the best quality possible. Its Pioneers equivalent of Panasonics Flexible Recording mode. As with many non-TiVo HDD decks weve tested, the DVR533H uses TV Guides free electronic programming guide for setting your recording schedule. While TV Guides EPG still wont work with satellite setups, we nally had no trouble getting it to work with our Time Warner New York digital cable box, Scientic Atlantas 8300HD. We plugged in the RF cable from our controller box; followed the EPGs setup instructions; attached the IR blaster, which changes channels on the cable box; then turned off the deck. About 24 hours later, we were greeted with our local channel lineup, program listings, and descriptions (just for a few days out, mind you, but thats what you get from a free EPG). Were still miffed by the guides clunky design only two columns of programming at a time, not to mention sluggish menus but were pleased by the new recording options, including weekly recording, custom start/end recording times, different recording speeds for specic shows, and reminders for when a show is about to begin. The deck has plenty of editing options for HDD and DVD-RW VR-mode recordings, including the ability to change title names, set thumbnails, erase sections of titles or divide them in two (HDD only), and add or remove chapter stops manually or automatically. With DVD-RW discs formatted in VR mode, you can also create playlists that let you edit together recordings without touching the original titles. If youre trying to edit recordings on DVD-RW discs in video mode (as opposed to VR mode; video mode creates discs that are compatible on most playback devices) or DVD-R discs, your recording options are limited to changing the title name and setting the thumbnail; however, you can always do your editing on the hard drive rst and copy the titles to disc later. The DVR-533H brings an impressive set of A/V connections. In the back of the deck, you get a progressive-scan-capable component-video output, two sets each of S-Video inputs and outputs, an optical (but not coaxial) digital audio output, and the standard RF ports, while up front youll nd a complete set of A/V inputs for a camcorder, including S-Video and FireWire inputs. The only real omission is a coaxial digital audio output. Pioneer also offers a version of this deck with a 160GB hard drive, called the DVR-633H-S. In addition, the Pioneer DVR531H-S ($349 list), which is identical to the DVR-533H-S except that it lacks a FireWire port, is available exclusively from Sams Club and Wal-Mart. PERFORMANCE The Pioneer DVR-533H-S scored strong if not exceptional marks in our performance tests. The deck captured about 450 lines of horizontal resolution in the 1-hour XP and 2-hour SP modes, with its resolution falling to a much softer 300 lines in the 4-hour LP mode, pretty much as expected. As we dialed down to the 8-hour SLP and 10-hour SEP modes, our recordings showed fewer than 250 lines, making for an even softer picture rife with MPEG artifacts again, nothing unusual there. Switching to our test recordings of Star Trek: Insurrection, we noticed our XP and SP recordings of the airborne probes snatching the eeing peasants looked rock-solid, although the SP recording showed some traces of background blockiness. At the LP setting, the picture looked much softer, and there were distracting, blocky artifacts throughout the rocky backdrop. Its recording quality in 4-hour mode is one area where the DVR-533H-S is soundly beaten by the Panasonic DMR-E50H. The image became jerky starting at the 6-hour EP mode, and by the time wed reached the SEP mode, it was wellnigh unwatchable but we expected as much from this mode. Moving to a darker scene in the damaged bridge of the Enterprise, the XP setting did a ne job of handling the tricky smoke and dark interiors, while colors started to look a little less saturated in SP mode. We saw some false contouring with the smoke in LP mode, growing gradually worse as we switched to the lower-quality modes. In our 2:3 pull-down test, the DVR-533H-S smoothly rendered the jaggy-prone bridges and haystacks during Insurrections opening credits. We also ran the Pioneer through Silicon Optics HQV benchmark against our reference Denon DVD-2900 and it scored signicantly lower not a huge surprise since Denon uses the SI chip. Overall, there were no glaring issues in its progressivescan playback performance. Our quick compatibility tests of DVD-R/RWs created by the DVR-533H-S also went well, but playback of DVD-R DL media we used Verbatim 4X discs was mixed. They played back ne on the newer GoVideo VR3930, the Denon DVD-2900, and the Sony DVP-NS975V, but the older Apex AD-600A and Onkyo DV-S525 didnt recognize the discs, and neither did a newer Portable One MX laptop. (To be fair, the laptop wouldnt recognize our Verbatim DVD+R DL discs either.) Compatibility varies widely depending on the media, the recorder, and especially the player, so these issues cant be blamed entirely on the Pioneer. The DVR-533H-S tested well in terms of DVD/CD playback compatibility.