By Matthew Henry
MELBOURNE: Pioneer Australia today announced its first Blu-ray player, the BDP-LX70, will arrive in June to complement the brand’s new 50-inch full high definition 1080p plasma.
Pioneer has not yet confirmed a price for the new player, which will go up against similar standalone Blu-ray players from Samsung and Panasonic and Sony’s PlayStation 3, which features a Blu-ray disc drive.
The key feature of Pioneer’s debut Australian Blu-ray player will be its ability to output 1080p full HD video at 24 frames per second, matching the frame rate used by Hollywood films for smooth and faithful playback of the latest movies.
“DVD, which has long been the most popular source material for viewing movies, has undergone a revolution with Blu-ray and the BDP-LX70. Teamed up with Pioneer’s PDP-5000EX full high definition (1080p) plasma screen, Pioneer can not only offer consumers an experience on par with going to the movies, it can now better it,” said Pioneer home electronics group marketing manager – video, Max Everingham.
The player also features HD home networking with the Home Media Gallery feature, which allows digital content such as video, images and music stored on a PC to be streamed to the player over an Ethernet cable connection.
Other features include HDMI output, multi-format capability for playback of BD-ROM, DVD and CD, Dolby TrueHD high resolution audio and a new graphical user interface for easy operation and navigation.