Pioneer Unleashes A PS3 Killer

For those of you that have been waiting for a "PS3 Killer" the time has come to open your wallets and dig deeply.  That's right, break out those moth eaten bills, and $2200 of them, and feast your senses on one serious bit of Blu-ray hardware: the Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD. 

While the PS3 may satisfy most, Pioneer's latest effort is for the more serious videophile, or at least one with their own trust fund.  Before you squawk at the pricetag, realize that this oversized box is more than just a Blu-ray player.  It also can handle your home theater audio duties as well.  It better do something to justify its 50 pound heft.  At least for this price, it does support the latest BD Live spec!  This kind of cash also gets you an Ethernet port, and not one, but two HDMI ports, as well as any other port you might actually ever need.

While this piece of hardware is not for everyone, it's always nice to see what the top end of the market is doing.  Who knows, maybe if you ask Santa nicely, you'll find one under your tree in the not too distant future...

Source

Comments

[Kelyhoo]

I read the write up on this and I think this writer is not sober.
Who would buy a PS3? If he knows this then the word PS3 killer would not be use. The pioneer have nothing in there that spell GAME ! so how can it be a killer?

[Solo_NZ]

Ahhh, this is the Blu ray freak website, not a gaming freak website...

He was talking about the fact that the PS3 is widely regarded as the best Blu Ray player at the moment, and a large number of people only buy it to play Blu Ray discs, not play games at all... some do, but in the context of this website, Blu Rays are what it's all about!

There has been no stand-alone player that is profile 2.0 compliant except the PS3. Well, now there is! The fact that it does so much more than the PS3, that an actual moviefan/audiophile would want, means for the first time we have an option (although on obviously bloody expensive one!) to get the player that does everything. As far as playing Blu Rays, this DESTROYS the PS3!

One huge advantage is that you don't have to change your Amp with this unit, as long as your amp has direct speaker inputs. (As most mid-top of the line units over the past 5 years do). There is no point streaming audio to your HD Panel to hear it out of two speakers on the TV.

This unit will allow us to get DTS-HD MA out into our excisting amps that don't have HDMI inputs and can't decode DTS HD MA. This saves you a lot of money, as DTS-HD MA decoding amps are not cheap! Anyone wanting a true HD experience knows that sounds is 50% of the experience, and DTS-HD MA is one of the main reasons for changing to Blu Ray. ALthough it is expensive, compare this to buying a PS3 and a new Amp capable of dealing with DTS HD MA and outputing the video to your panel, and it makes it a bit closer money-wise than you would think.

Obviously not for everyone at this price, but the build quality and features are what people like me have been waiting (and saving) for. And all we need now is for the Movie Studios to use Blu Ray to it's actual potential, and create discs with the sound quality we want... DTS HD MA! To many movies are being trasnfered from lower grade versions rather than the original film, and they are not using DTS-HD for sound. Movie Studio execs... if you ever read this, please, please, please take advantage of the opportunity and give your customers what they want, a real reason to upgrade into Blu Ray, give us all you can! Do the right thing!

Anyway, that's my rant over with... :-)

[Ralph]

It is disappointing that we have to spend $2,200 for a blu-ray player to beat a PS3 that only costs $400.