At a press event in New York City earlier today, Pioneer unveiled new players in their Blu-ray Disc line-up. The Pioneer BDP-51FD ($599) and Pioneer Elite BDP-05FD ($799), each feature BonusView support (aka “Profile 1.1”) as well as vastly improved loading times. Both players are expected to ship this Summer.
Pioneer chose not to include support for BD-Live in these models, based on their own market research that suggested there is not currently strong demand for the feature and the higher cost it would entail. A step-up model to include BD-Live support is expected in the fall.
Pioneer concentrated instead on enhancing the picture quality of the players and drastically improving initial start-up and load times. The new player goes from being fully powered off to displaying the “load disc” message in just 14 seconds. That's perkier even than the Panasonic DMP-BD30, though still not as nimble as the PS3. Disc eject times have also been improved with a claimed sub-1 second eject time, even on advanced BD-Java titles.
Speaking of which, Blu-ray titles which feature BD-Java menus (such as Ratatouille) have caused some early adopters to go into fits (and children to ask, "Are we there yet?") waiting sometimes two or three minutes to load the menu on a first or second generation player. But the new Pioneer players load these titles in well under 30 seconds. I didn't time it precisely but a head-to-head demo against a previous generation Pioneer player was quite effective as the new players were ready to roll on Ratatouille while the “loading” status bar on the earlier player was still slowly creeping its was toward 100%.
In the audio department, both players will support on-board decoding and bitstreaming of all of the currently available surround sound codecs, including multi-channel PCM, Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio (though DTS support may require a firmware upgrade). The players will be the first to include 7.1-channel analog outputs, in addition to offering multi-channel PCM conversion of DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD over the HDMI output.
For music lovers, both models feature a new jitter-free CD playback option when paired with a compatible Pioneer receiver (SC-05 or SC-07). This feature uses the HDMI-CEC transport layer to deliver digital clock data to the receiver for synchronization with its own highly precise master clock. Professional quality Wolfson Digital Audio Converters (DACs) are utilized on the players for those who prefer to use the analog audio outputs to connect the player to older receivers without support for the new surround sound codecs.
As for the video, both players exploit HDMI® 1.3a technology, with the ability to support the new DeepColor feature available in HDMI 1.3. And you won't need to wait for new DeepColor Blu-ray titles in order to exploit this. Much like an upconverting DVD player which translates a DVDs' 480 lines to 1080, the new Pioneer Blu-ray Disc players feature on-board color conversion of standard 8-bit Blu-ray Disc software to 12-bit color detail, filling in the lost color information through advanced interpolation.
The players also support native 1080p/24 frames/second output (1080/24p) to enable compatible displays to produce a film-like, judder-free high definition image. Pioneer's PureCinema Deinterlacer has been enhanced to support 24 fps output even for standard DVDs, detecting the underlying film cadence and presenting standard definition content in its best possible light.
Model Comparison (DBP-51FD vs. BDP-05FD)
|
Feature |
Pioneer BDP-51FD |
Elite BDP-05FD |
|
BonusView |
Yes |
Yes |
|
HDMI 1.3a |
Yes, 12-bit Deep Color |
Yes, 12-bit Deep Color |
|
Advanced Audio Bitstream |
Yes, All Formats |
Yes, All Formats |
|
Advanced Audio Decoding |
Dolby Digital Plus/Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD*/DTS HD Master Audio* |
Dolby Digital Plus/Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD*/DTS HD Master Audio* |
|
Wolfson Professional Audio DACs |
Yes x 4 |
Yes x 4 |
|
High Quality Video Encoder |
108Mhz 12-Bit |
297Mhz 12-Bit |
|
Jitter-free HDMI Audio with PQLS |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Picture Control Suite |
Yes |
Yes |
|
7.1 Channel Analog Output |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Gold Plated Connectors |
No |
Yes |
|
Aluminum Front Panel |
No |
Yes |
|
Capacitance Touch Key Buttons |
No |
Yes |
|
New Graphic User Interface |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Warranty |
1 Year |
2 Year |
