Pioneer Elite Rolls Out New Reference Series Blu-Ray Player, BDP-09FD

Here goes another flagship Blu-ray player way out of my price range. Pioneer Electronics has rolled out a reference series Blu-ray player with industry's most advanced audio/video components. The new Elite BDP-09FD features Blu-ray Bonusview and supports all HD audio codecs via bitstream or internal audio decoder. BD-Live is now a standard feature which was missing from their last line-up, BDP05FD and BPD51FD.

Being a flagship player, the new Elite has all the features one would expect in a high end Audio component, including a devoted power supply for the analog audio board, eight Wolfson® WM8740 Audio DACs (7.1 analog out), a Precision Quartz Lock System (PQLS) and custom-made capacitors.

As for video processing, it incorporates a newly-engineered 16-bit video engine from Marvell® award-winning QDEO™ processor and Pioneer's proprietary Adaptive Bit Length Expansion technology to provide I/P conversion, video scaling and video adjustments of HD and SD content. 1080/24P is also made available for DVD content.

For $2,199, you get gold plated outputs terminals, center loading disc tray, solid steel bottom plate, aluminum chassis, and rugged TAOC insulators for better damping. The Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD flagship Blu-ray Disc player will begin shipping later this year.