Blu-ray Players Pioneer BDP-51FD Blu-ray Player - Benchmark
| Pioneer BDP-51FD Blu-ray Player - Benchmark |
| Written by Chris Heinonen and Adrian Wittenberg |
| Thursday, 12 February 2009 00:00 |
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Page 6 of 6
Conclusions The Pioneer BDP-51FD has the cosmetics of a high end Blu-ray player, and has respectable HD and SD performance from the HDMI outputs. With its ability to bitstream all the next generation audio codecs, and promised support for internal decoding of dtsMaster Audio coming soon, it can feed your AV system with a quality image and a great soundtrack. However, when compared to other current Blu-ray players, its lack of Profile 2.0 support means you may start to miss out on special features that are available via download only. Additionally, with no internet connection or USB ports, features that players are starting to offer such as Netflix streaming, support will not be possible. Aside from that, its sluggish responsiveness is its only other major negative trait. With that being said, if you just want to watch the movie and BD-Live features don’t concern you then its a worthy player to consider. Comments (7)
Way too slow
written by Paul , April 23, 2009 What a pity. I bought this player, and whilst blown away by its picture and sound quality, I just can't put up with how slow it is. It is embarrassing the time it takes even to merely eject the tray from standby. I have had friends ask me if it is faulty!!! Very embarrassing when the fair less down market LG blu rays blow it out of the water with how quick they operate and load discs. Will wait for a little while and see if a firmware upgrade corrects this, but looks like might have to try another brand! What a pity.
Firmware Upgrade
written by Chris Heinonen , April 24, 2009 Paul, What version of firmware are you running? I talked to someone over at Pioneer after reviewing the player and was told that the updated firmware can now eject the tray from standby without having to do a full boot, which is a large improvement. However, I had already sent the unit back so I couldn't test this myself. The updated firmware with DTS Master Audio decoding should be out sometime in the next couple of months as well, as that update is in testing for the BDP-09 right now and will be on the BDP-51 shortly after that.
Is the unit's Date of Manufacture important?
written by Nelson Abdullah , May 05, 2009 I have been looking into this BluRay player at Best Buy since they dropped the price to $299. I noticed the BDP-51FD players in the store were manufactured in June 2008 and several old blog posts mentioned updates in August 2008 so I don't know whether this date of manufacture is important. Your review is dated February 2009 but you didn't mention when your test unit was made.
Date of Manufacture
written by Chris Heinonen , May 05, 2009 The unit that I tested was made in September 2008. I don't know of any differences in the hardware that are dependent on the date of manufacture, the important thing to do is to update the firmware after you get a unit since it most likely will not ship with the most recent version.
Firmware version v125.a
written by Earl Yetman , May 13, 2009 I too have a player mfg. in September 2008. I just installed firmware update v125.a from the Pioneer website. I am quite disappointed that it will still not internally decode DTS-MA. It does seem to load a bit faster than the v1.08 that was originally on the player. So far the function of the player has been flawless. The picture blows away any but the most expensive Blu-Ray players. As a bonus it is an absolutely fantastic CD player. As a note: I had an LG Blu-Ray player, yes it loaded faster but the picture and audio quality of the Pioneer far surpass that of the LG, making it worth waiting for. Write comment
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