Pioneer Brings New 'Elite' Blu-Ray Players To Market

Pioneer is announcing two new Blu-ray players today, both of which build on their legacy of top-end home theater devices. Both the BDP-85FD and BDP-88FD are "designed to be the ultimate reference players for today's audio and video enthusiast", according to Pioneer.

Sliding away from the video side of Blu-ray, Pioneer is taking a heavy-handed approach to audio this time around. Chris Walker , Director of AV product planning and marketing for the Home Electronics Division at Pioneer, says "True audio video enthusiasts will see and hear a significant difference between our new Elite BDP players and other offerings currently in the market". That's because Pioneer is using all four integrated DACs to reduce noise in their BDP-88FD, giving audiophiles reference quality audio.

Both new Pioneer Blu-ray decks also feature a "Direct Function Circuit", which shuts down video circuits and redirects all the processing power when a pure analog signal is noticed.

For those times you're actually watching video, Pioneer's new Blu-ray players have 4K Reference Converters to upscale your content to Ultra HD 4K. That 4K processing is helped by Pioneer's Precise Pixel Driver processor, which gives an intensely dense image on a display that can handle it.

You can pick both of these devices up in December, but don't think you'll do so causally. Pioneer will retail the BDP-85FD at $1,000, while the BDP-88FD will hit a $2,000 price point.