Leading the trio is the top-end LX52. It’s the first to feature Pioneer’s Precision Quartz Lock System, which abbreviates to the tongue-swoggling PQLS. We’re going to pronounce that ‘puhklus’. It’s designed to eliminate wobbly audio when connected to a puhklus AV receiver.
All three will support BD-Live, which will be fantastic if anyone ever thinks of anything interesting to do with it. The LX52 and 320 include internal storage for BD-Live content, but the 120 has a 2GB flash drive that you plug into the USB port.
The BDP-320 arrives this month for £400, with the BDP-120 following in July for £270 alongside the BDP-LX52 at £550.
King Viserys finally passed away in last week’s episode, but Rhaenyra and Daemon Targaryen didn’t find out about it. Unbeknownst to them, a new king, Aegon the Second, had already been crowned. They learned of these bombshells in Sunday’s fiery House of the Dragon season 1 finale, which saw the first dragon fight of the …
It’s a sad fact that all DVD players aren’t created equal. You get ones that churn out a lovely picture, and ones that don’t do such a good job. The same is true of Blu-ray players, but of course with 1080p video it’s much harder to tell what problems there are — because everything looks amazing, even on the lower-quality players.
Since Pioneer has positioned itself as a high-end manufacturer, its job is to provide the very best players, even if 95 per cent of people can’t tell the difference. That’s where the BDP-LX71 comes in — it’s more expensive than most Blu-ray players, but is engineered to produce the best possible picture and sound quality from the format. It’s a strategy that works well with Pioneer’s TVs, which cost more, but have pretty much the best picture quality your money can buy.
Having said all of that, the BDP-LX71 isn’t an especially over-priced player: a Google search told us that you can expect to pay around £700 or less for it. While that’s more costly than many players — and more than twice as much as a PS3 — it’s not a million miles away from Sony’s BDP-S500, a player that spits out a brilliant picture, but is as slow as an asthmatic old dog and a nightmare with interactive discs.
The Pioneer is a profile 1.1 player, which means you get the secondary video decoder that allows you to watch picture-in-picture content — you know, the sort of thing you get on every DVD and HD DVD player ever made. There’s no Ethernet port though, so a firmware update to profile 2.0 is out of the questio.
In terms of connectivity, you do get a wealth of sockets to plug stuff into. Obviously, there’s HDMI 1.3, which allows all the delightful high-definition trimmings to pass unadulterated to the TV. You also get analogue 7.1 audio outputs, a must for the audiophile who has an older HDMI-free AV receiver. DTS-HD Master Audio will also be supported, but later, via a firmware upgrade.
Pioneer also reckons this player will kick arse at DVD upscaling too, because of its built-in PureCinema deinterlacer, which should cut down on the nasty artefacts commonly associated with interlaced material. As soon as we get our filthy mitts on one, we’ll let you know what we think. –Ian Morris
It’s not a surprise to see Pioneer launching a Blu-ray player — we’ve been waiting for it for some time now. The good news is our thumb twiddling hasn’t been for nothing, because Pioneer has come up with a fantastic-looking player with some nifty features: pray silence for the BDP-LX70.
The most exciting feature of the LX70 is its ability to access files on your home network. It’s fully DLNA compliant, which means you can stream MPEG-2 and WMV video and photos and MP3s from a PC. While this isn’t especially new, it’s not a feature you get on most players, so Crave welcomes it with open arms.
It goes without saying that the LX70 supports 1080p as well as a fantastic array of audio formats. Sound is often one of the most neglected elements on high-definition players, but if you’re seeing beautiful video, Pioneer reasons you’ll want good sound too. Hence support for the smashing Dolby True HD. This means sound is compressed losslessly, which in turn means you should be able to hear detail that would previously have been compressed out of existence.
We also happen to think it’s probably one of the most beautiful next-generation players we’ve seen too. Finished in piano black with tasty silver bits at choice locations, you can’t help but be a little seduced. Certainly, it’s better looking than most of the other Blu-ray players on the market.
There’s also support for 24 frames per second output too. This rate accurately represents how the original film was shot, and preserves the pitch of the original soundtrack. So you’ll be getting a more cinema-like experience, as long as you hook it up to a compatible television. The good news there is all Pioneer’s new plasma screens will accept this format.
The BDP-LX70 will launch in June, and the word on the street is it will cost somewhere in the region of £1,000. -Ian Morris
Pioneer got the jump on its rivals in announcing the first Blu-ray player to hit the market today at CES, even if it was only thanks to press conference timing. However, when it launches in June the BDP-HD1 won’t come cheap. This 1080p compatible player will cost $1,800, and it doesn’t even record to the format.
The player is geared at the high-end early adopter, which could give Toshiba the upper hand with its $500 budget HD DVD player. Pioneer’s BDP-HD1 supports HDMI connectivity, for full digital video and audio down one cable, and it will connect to a Windows PC so that you can stream media across a network. The audio formats used on Blu-ray include new high-definition versions of existing standards, including DTS HD and Dolby Digital. It will also upscale existing DVD movies up to 1080p resolution, which is another high-level feature unseen aside from high-end DVD players from people like Marantz.
Pioneer is also set to release a PC Blu-ray player in the first quarter of the year, although the price for the BDR-101A is still high at $1,000. The drive will read from Blu-ray discs and write to existing DVD formats. We expect that similar Blu-ray machines from manufacturers such as Philips and Panasonic will release much cheaper models. Keep an eye on Crave for more news as it happens. -GC
