Pioneer BDP-51FD User Manual

Page 4

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Pioneer BDP-09FD Elite Blu-ray Player (Benchmark) - Page 4

press a button on the player

as there is no button on the

remote. A couple of times

I would go start a movie,

forgetting that I had listened

to a CD the day before, and

be treated to a black screen

as the disc loaded, since

Pure Audio was disabling

the video output of the

player. I would have to wait

a couple of minutes for

the BluRay disc to get to

the main menu, then stop

it, walk up to the player,

switch off Pure Audio, then

start the disc up again and

wait a couple more minutes

for it to load once again. If

Pioneer could add a menu

setting for this based on

media type, or at least a

way to disable it from the

remote, that would be

nice.

PerForMance – VIdeo

I had been very happy

with the performance of

the Pioneer BDP-51FD

previously, and I must say

that they did a fantastic

job with Blu-ray playback

once again. Watching a

variety of movies, from

the better-than-expected

“Kung Fu Panda”, to The

“Dark Knight” and “Band

of Brothers”, the Pioneer played back

everything and looked fantastic doing it.

Looking at test patterns I would see that it

could pass BTB and WTW signals allowing

for an easy calibration to make sure I was

getting the most out of it.

Unfortunately, Blu-ray discs were still a bit

slower to load compared to my PlayStation3

console. Watching “Kung Fu Panda”, I could

get to the main menu in 1:30 on the PS3,

but it took 2:17 on the Pioneer. That didn’t

bother me too much as every player takes a

while to start on a Blu-ray disc it seems, but I

wish the Pioneer could eject a disc from being

powered off quicker than the 40 seconds it

takes right now.

With a recent Firmware update, the Pioneer

has added support for DTS-MA decoding

inside the player, so now all of the audio

formats can be decoded and sent over the 7.1

analog outputs. Sound quality from movies

was nothing short of spectacular. Band of

Brothers continued to draw me in, and the

sound of the bullets flying everywhere in

the battle scenes was fantastic. Listening to

“Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds: Live at

Radio City”, I wanted to turn it up as loud

as I could to hear all the detail from their

guitars. A few years ago I had grown tired

of Dave Matthews, but that disc on a good

player sounds so fantastic that I can keep

going back to it over and over now, and the

Pioneer brought out all of the detail in it.

The Pioneer also did a good job of standard

DVD playback. Scaling to 1080p I didn’t

detect any motion artifacts, encountered no

lip-sync issues even on some titles that people

have had issues with on other upscaling

players, and generally made a DVD look as

good as possible. I would never mistake the

upconverted picture for a true Blu-ray disc,

but it did as good a job as any player that I

have seen and that is what I am looking for.

“... impeccably built and looks

fantastic.”

With their recent firmware, Pioneer has also

finally added support for BD Live using the

players Ethernet port and 4 GB of storage.

Discs that I had tested connected quickly

and worked great, supporting all of the extra

online features that discs now offer, except

for the one Disney title that I was able to test

(WALL-E). Since this was an early release

of the firmware before it has gone through

the entire QA process, I’ve made Pioneer

aware of the issue and they should have this

resolved before it is released to the general

public, currently planned for late April. With

DTS-MA decoding and BD Live support,

the Pioneer BDP-09FD should now support

all features available on BluRay discs at this

time.

Unfortunately, one feature that I was unable

to test was the bit-depth conversion that the

Pioneer can perform internally. Color data

on DVD and BluRay discs is stored in an 8

bit format, so when you scale the picture to

a different resolution, or perform any extra

processing on the image (noise reduction,

gamma correction), you can easily introduce

errors that can be seen as unsmooth gradients

of color, or blotchy areas of an image, since

you’re only using those 8 bits per color.

The Pioneer converts everything to 16 bits

internally, and does all of the processing at 16

bits, only going back to 8 bits at the very end

of the output stage. This allows for smoother

gradients, and could allow for a better

looking upconversion for DVD sources.

Unfortunately, to output this extra detail

you would need an HDMI 1.3 compatible

display (so it can display Deep Color) and my

display does not support that unfortunately.

However, since I didn’t see any of these issues

when I was testing the player, those with

HDMI 1.3 displays might see some extra

detail that I could not.

VIdeo PerForMance (BenchMark)

The BDP-09FD performed very well

across the board on all of our benchmark

tests. Measurements with the Tektronix

Oscilloscope were taken from the component

analog video outputs measured at 1080i

resolution. The BDP-09FD showed strong

performance in our core video tests passing all

of the tests that check for chroma upsampling

error test, having no problems with Y/C

delay, and displaying a white level that is spot

on at 100 IRE. In addition the BDP-09FD

retains the full screen image and zero pixels

were cropped. The frequency response from

the analog outputs, as shown in the graph, is

very smooth throughout the spectrum with a

slight tapering off in the highest frequencies

which translates to excellent picture quality.

In our HD section of the Blu-ray benchmark

the BDP-09FD performed equally well

passing our tests for banding, and 1920x1080

pixel cropping. As a motion adaptive player,

the Pioneer was able to apply diagonal filtering

to material, thereby enhancing the image

when there are a lot of jagged or diagonal lines

present. Proper 1080 i/p conversion is a must

for a reference player and the BDP-09FD

was able to convert material with 2:2 and 3:2

cadences properly so even concert footage or

documentaries will play properly without any

loss of resolution. Since Blu-ray players have

hit the market there haven’t been that many

that have really good digital noise reduction.

The Pioneer BDP-09FD on the other hand,

has excellent digital noise reduction and has

the most robust menu I have seen to date

with individual adjustments for mosquito,

luma, and chroma noise reduction. The end

result is the ability to fine tune the picture

very precisely.

standard dVd PerForMance

Not many Blu-ray players to date also have

offered good standard DVD performance