Rotting mutterers - myself included - have pretty much accepted that DVD is not going to go away. But have we learned our lessons, or will a bunch of idiotic Luddites attempt to stall the format the way they did CD? Probably not, as all of the main culprits in 1983 were only capable of making turntables; now they're all digitised to the last man. If the Pioneer DVL-909 is anything to go by, things are going to be as bad as they were for CD's first half-decade. Indeed, so fine is the DVL-909 that I'm buying one.

What? The supposedly-cautious KK purchasing a product? Is this the same paranoid who thinks analogue tape is cutting-edge and swears he's gonna run Windows 95 into the next millennium? The very same. But that's not inconsistent if you look at DVD's brief history.

While I and others have bitched and grumbled about (1) the US and Japan getting DVD over a year ahead of Europe, and (2) the iniquities of the zoning system, it actually worked in our favour. How so? Simple: We never got any of the nasty, early-1997 machines which certain Yanks now regret buying.* So 'first generation' in the previous paragraph actually means 'first generation Europe' - equal to second or third in the US. Hence, the poor saps who bought DVD players in the first half of 1997 were our guinea pigs.

As for the new Pioneer machine, a friend in the USA - a hard-core videophile with hands-on experience of most top machines - tells me there's growing street-level support for the DVL-909 as 'the first combo-player worth owning'. This is due in no small part to the DVL-909 featuring twin pickups, one dedicated to DVD and the other to CD/LD, rather than sharing a joint device. Or so I gather.

Although Zone One consumers took care of the teething problems before we so much as got a sniff at a Zone Two player, we are at the same stage as they were 18 months ago: total ignorance, no software. So, please, try to follow my shaky logic: If this is Year One for DVD, and if the first people here to invest in DVD are hard-core videophiles, it stands to reason that they were masochistic NTSC laserdisc users as well. Hence, they have libraries of precious LDs which they may not wish to discard. Assuming that they weren't so impatient as to have already purchased Zone One players converted for 240V operation, a combo DVD/LD player is just the ticket. (And the LD portion of the DVL-909 plays both NTSC and PAL laserdiscs, too.)

If the whole point of buying a kosher Zone Two machine is to avoid all of the problems of acquiring imported discs, it presupposes that we will eventually have access to a catalogue as broad as that in the USA. NaÔve, or what? If anything, we'll be as badly treated for at least the first five years as we were with PAL laserdiscs. But, giving the software manufacturers the benefit of the doubt, we must judge them as innocent until proven guilty, venal and stupid. In which case, the DVL-909 is a perfect way to start one's DVD 'awareness'.

Because this is a 'pure hi-fi magazine' and there lurk among you Philistines with an utter lack of interest in or respect for motion pictures, my brief was to assess the DVL-909's sonic worth. Which is a good thing because the DVL-909 supplied for review is absolutely identical to the 240V machines we will be able to buy here with one exception: it's a Zone One player in the DVD visuals department...

What the hell. At the time of writing, there's a total of one Zone Two DVD disc available as far as I can tell: . Whereas I have a fistful of Zone One discs. And, anyway, the video side of things takes second place to the sonic in your world, right?

Merely to glance at the DVL-909, to mess around with its funky, comprehensive remote controller, to check out the various methods of configuring it, is to want one. It has the look of certain luxurious Marantz items, that aluminium front panel finished in champagne gold. For a machine which accepts 12in discs, it's sleek and compact at 420x146x464mm (WHD). The front panel is remarkably uncluttered because nearly every control has been fitted to the hand-held. All you get on the DVL-909 itself are separate open and close buttons for the LD tray or the DVD/CD tray, play/pause, stop, forward and reverse, side A or B, meter-off and power on/off. And the latter will be used rarely, as there's a standby mode: touch any button, e.g. tray open, and it powers on.

Pioneer thought of every possible installation requirement with an array of connections including two SCART in/out sockets, 75 ohm component video output, S-video, optical and coaxial digital audio, phono for analogue audio output and RF output to access Dolby Digital (off laser discs). Trying to imagine a situation which the DVL-909 couldn't address yielded nothing, unless you insist on BNC or XLR balanced...

Feeding a Lexicon DC-1 surround sound decoder/pre-amp and a speaker set-up of three Apogee LCRs across the front and two Apogee Compact Monitors at the back, driven by Acurus amplifiers, the DVL-909 was compared to a slew of CD players and DACs to assess its pure audio performance. These included Theta's now sadly-discontinued DATA III LD/CD transport, the Chroma and Pro Gen Va converters, Musical Fidelity's X-DAC, and the Jadis Orchestra and Roksan Caspian CD players. Programme material included a barrage of conventional CDs and samplers from Classic Records' 96kHz/24-bit program, plus assorted DTS titles. For the visuals, I compiled a selection of titles which I had on both LD and Zone One DVD, including , and and a selection of demo DVDs, including the ornery DTS , of which the Meridian 586.2 DVD player could only access the visuals.

But then there's DVD, and both and the Beatles films converted me: the DVL-909 simply slaughters other DVD players I've tried. Previously, I thought the Beatles discs were simply bad transfers, and that the claims of remastering were bogus. Not so. Through the Pioneer, it was easy to see that the colours on were bolder and richer, while the black-and-white revealed a crystal-clarity not seen on any other formats, including the Criterion LD. As for Big Arnie...