Pioneer DVR-540H grainy by nature?

Hello

I recently bought a DVR-540H recorder from Japan, thinking it should be good after reading many positive reviews. However, testing with both XP and SP quality I do think the picture is quite grainy... Anyone else who thinks so?

I wanted to transfer some Laserdiscs to DVD and therefore hooked up my high-end CLD-R7G LD-player. I tried both the RCA and S-video connections (in case the DVR´s 3YC filter is better than the LD-player's), but both of them had noticable amounts of grain.

Is the player so mych fr ahead of my LD-player that it's "too" sharp, producing the grain? I tried an RCA tranfer from a PS2 game as well, which looked better, but still not good enough...

Thanks,
Jon