Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Pioneer 563A

I have a slightly newer DV-578 model which probably flushed a few earlier problems. I got it for only $67 CAD open box at Best Buy. At those prices you cannot possibly go wong - this is a price of _cheap_ surround analog 6 channel cable after all. I find video quality quite good, the only thing I know it fails on is darker than black test. The picture is noticably better than 5-disk Pannasonic F87 changer For a piece this cheap grievances are really minor:
+ Slow to open (1.5 or so seconds rather than immediate)
+ Position of captions not adjustable
+ Disk spinning mechanically audible at extremely low volumes or in complete silence.
+ After setting the display to be off the unit wakes up next time from standby showing crap on screen - have to cycle the display dimmer level again to turn it on or off properly.

Still for a universal SACD / DVD-A it is a steal and when you hear some of the surround music it will make you forget you only have a cheap unit. Enjoy.

M60 x 2
QS8 x 4
VP150
HSU STF2
Panasonic LT500U
Marantz 7400
Panasonic DVD-F87 (used for CD / Stereo)
Pioneer DV-578 (DVD-A / SACD)

The 563a was a product of the year in one of the british hifi magazines. I read one review that said you had to get up to the 500+ models to really see any improvement. Their are a lot of mods you can do to that player too. For sacd/dvd audio, I know of nothing better under 250.

One thing you need to be aware of with the 563 is that it needs a firmware update to be compatible with several newer DVD-A. Audioasylum has a bunch of threads on this. Do a search for "Pioneer 563".

I have one that wouldn't play "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" no matter what I did. You'll need to call Pioneer and get an authorization for the update, take it to a service center or ship it to Pioneer. Once I got the update done it worked fine.