News and Show Reports
Pioneer Bows Elite BDP-09FD Blu-ray Disc Player with BD-Live
By Chris Boylan
2008-09-06 11:51:52

Pioneer Electronics has been stepping up their Blu-ray Player game this year with the release of their BDP-51FD and Pioneer Elite BDP-05FD BonusView players earlier this Summer, each of which features vastly improved disc loading and playback times, improved feature sets and higher performance than their predecessors. Now at CEDIA Expo in Denver this week, Pioneer has unveiled its first Blu-ray player to support the BD-Live feature for access to internet and network-based content and it looks to be an exceptional marvel of engineering.

Unveiled this week at CEDIA Expo in Denver, the new flagship player in their Elite line, the BDP-09FD heads Pioneer's Blu-ray line, not only in features but also in audio and video performance. In addition to BD-Live, the player supports BonusView (PIP content) on Blu-ray titles which exploit this feature.

Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD Blu-ray Disc player features BonusView and BD-Live.

Big Picture

In the video department, the player features advanced internal components including a Pioneer®/Renesas® jointly developed core video processing chipset, a 16-bit color processor featuring Pioneer's proprietary Adaptive Bit Length Expansion technology, as well as Marvell's QDEO™ processor for effective upsampling of standard definition content to high definition resolutions. The BDP-09FD is the first Pioneer player to support 24 frames/second output (1080p/24) for standard DVDs

Big Sound

No slouch in the audio department, the BDP-09FD uses professional-level audio technologies to improve sound quality from all sources: DVD, Blu-ray Disc and CD. The BDP-09FD supports full decoding and bit-stream output for all Dolby and DTS formats including Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. A dedicated power supply for the analog audio board prevents interference from the video circuitry, and eight Wolfson® WM8740 Audio DACs are included: one for each audio channel.

A look under the hood reveals audiophile-grade parts and ample breathing room.

Big Features

In addition to the BonusView capability for viewing picture-in-picture content on titles which exploit this feature, the BDP-09FD also supports BD-Live via an on-board Ethernet jack. When connected to the internet, this player allows customers to play online games, download trailers, ringtones and other content (on compatible Blu-ray titles), and to download firmware upgrades to the player when new functions or enhancements become available. The player even features dual HDMI outputs for concurrent connection to more that one display, or for independent connections to both a display device and a receiver for the purest signal path.

The Pioneer Elite player features a nicely laid out back panel, including 7.1-channel analog audio outputs and two HDMI outputs.

The Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD Blu-ray Disc player will begin shipping in 2008 for a suggested retail price of $2,199.