In case Sony’s 8x Blu-ray recorder isn’t for you, Pioneer is soon to have its own super-fast Blu-ray PC burner. The BDR-03J can author Blu-ray media at 8x speeds, DVD-R at 16x and CD-Rs at 32x; not that you’re burning the later that much anymore. The serial-ATA optical drive is dropping in Japan sometime in January, but will hopefully hitch a ride ‘cross the Pacific shortly after.
Put your seatbelt on for this one.
Check out the Pioneer DVR-X162J [JP], an external DVD burner that’s enclosed in a dustproof shell. That is to say the external enclosure is dustproof, handy if you’re an Okie in 1936.
Aside from its incredible dustproofing, the burner is your standard issue USB 2.0 little guy. Pioneer has outfitted it with something called Pure Read Technology, which allegedly improves the data burn quality. Yes, I think that’s marketing nonsense, too.
The notorious practice of leaving the price “open” strikes again, accompanying its December release date.
via Akihabara News
Pioneer has just opened its second retail location and the companies CEO doesn’t seemed worried even with the dismal fate of Circuit City and Tweeter. According to Masao Kawabata, Pioneer products are recession tough thanks to its mid to high-end niche market of premium products. So while mainstream Best Buy-specialdisplays might be having issues, Kuro displays and such should be fine. I can tell you that as long as Pioneer keeps pumping out extremely high-quality displays like the 60-inch Elite display sitting next to me, the company will be fine. Make the right products and the sales will follow.
With Circuit City and CompUSA’s woes, you would think that electronic makers would shy away from opening brick and mortar stores. Not Pioneer though, oh noes, the company is opening its second US store; this time in Phoenix. The store is loaded with KURO displays, Blu-ray players, Elite speakers, and its Premier line of car electronics. Plus, previously Japanese-exclusive products are going to be available that include Pure Malt Speakers and headphones. Hopefully these stores will follow the yellow brick path paved by Apple Stores and not follow Circuit City’s road leading to the bowels of hell.
Let’s say your name is, I don’t know, Jonathan Peters or Jojo Flores or Armand Van Helden. As a DJ you need a pair of solid headphones, ones that not only sound good but look good. (It’s a vain industry, DJing.) Are these Pioneer HDJ-2000 headphones what the doctor ordered? Who knows—I haven’t heard them yet—but given Pioneer’s pedigree I’d say there’s a good chance that, yes, these are quality.
We all knew that eventually Blu-ray would hit the home theater in a box market and while the Pioneer LX010BD isn’t the first, it seems well equipped. For £2000 ($3,137 USD) British AV snobs will be rock’n out to 5.1 audio sound out of dodecahedron compact speakers (it means 12-sided shape, playboy) that claim to produce omni-directional sound for a better surround experience. Plus, the system ships with a LCD touchscreen remote which should partially justify the systems stratospherically high price. To bad the Blu-ray player is only Profile 1.1 and therefore cannot enjoy any of BD-Live’s fun features ’cause otherwise, this is one nice HTIB.
A federal jury found yesterday that Samsung willfully infringed two of Pioneer’s patents covering plasma televisions. As such, the Korean electronics giant will have to cough up (“cough up” is the technical term, mind you) some $59 million, payable to Pioneer.
As you might expect, Samsung plans to appeal the ruling forever and ever.
Sorta interesting: a Japanese corporation taking a Korean corporation to an American court for redress. We’re so globalized!
Pioneer is making two Limited Edition Kuro HDTVs available to lucky Euro A/V trash this Holiday season. It seems these editions are simply the KRP-500A with a different color bezel options. They sport the same external set-top box style input receiver, extreme black contrast ratio and the rest of the stellar Pioneer specs. Only 1,000 KRP-500ABG beige models and 1,500 KRP-500AW white models are going to be produced. No word on price yet, but it will probably be higher than the standard edition.
DivX is making its way into more and more CE devices. Pioneer’s latest Blu-ray players couldn’t withstand the DivX invasion and the BDP-LX71, BDP-LX08 and BDP-51FD all earned the certification that states the unit can playback high-quality DivX material. These players are already shipping worldwide, so just because yours doesn’t carry the logo on the front bezel doesn’t mean that the player isn’t certified.
The latest in earphone design, as seen in the Pioneer SE-CLX50? What the company calls Flex Nozzle, which allows the ‘phones to be moved about in several directions. Makes them more comfortable to wear, apparently.
The earphones will be available in the three colors you see right up there when they’re released in November for around $73. That seems an awful lot of money for, shall we say, sorta commodity-looking earphones.
For the first time ever, Pioneer is going to start selling LCD TVs here in the States starting next year. This cames after years of battling the endless plasma verse LCD war. The two sets, already on sale in Europe, are a 37- and 32-inch with the LCD panels coming from Sharp. I wouldn’t expect anything groundbreaking from the LCDs as Pioneer still probably wants to keep the focus on the companies awesome plasma options, and are simply selling these as additional options. Plasmas do give the best picture experience from a flat-panel possible thanks to the deep blacks and white whites, but sometimes because of lighting issues or customer ignorance, LCDs are preferred.
Let’s start with a quote:
The Elite KURO Signature Series PRO-101FD (50-inch class) and PRO-141FD (60-inch class) monitors are now shipping for the suggested price of $5,500 and $7,000, respectively.
50 inches of pure black Kuro for $5,500? Where do I sign? Pioneer is launching two new high-end monitors – probably for retail and design use – that offer monstrous blacks in a monitor the size of a small child. You’ve got 4 HDMI 1.3 inputs, 1 DVI input, and a before/after settings monitor that allows you to compare monitor settings while tweaking things.
These things look hot as heck. I would totally do all my blogging on a 60-inch Kuro, given the option.
Now that Blu-Ray has five years to live, it’s important for CE manufacturers to pump out as much hardware as possible so that soon my son can bring me a BD disc and, while snickering grandly, will ask “You guys used these?” in the same way I once laughed at Laserdiscs.
The BDP-09FD plays BD, CD, and DVD disks and includes upconverting and BD-Live features. The drive will cost $2,199 and includes dual HDMI 1.3a and a “rugged TAOC insulators” to lend to “uncompromised picture quality.”
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Just in case you needed to spend a little more on our eventual economic downfall, here are some nice internal speakers from Pioneer that promise to blend into to your Deserted Island tan color scheme. The Elite EX Series in-wall speakers come in multiple forms including in-wall and angled in-ceiling models
The Elite line starts at $1,799 each while the CST in-wall units cost about $499 a pair. The subwoofers start at $399 and go up to $1,700 for a 12-inch front firer.
Most AV guys will tell you that, currently, the best Blu-ray player on the market is the PS3. That reign is going to come smashing down when the Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD hits the market though. Simply put: this is one bad mother. 50lbs of steel and aluminum, this Blu-ray player is the stuff some guys dream about. Well, maybe just our dreams.
The BDP-09FD is the first Pioneer unit to support Profile 2.0 and BD-Live, 4GB of internal storage, along with some amazing audio and video tech. Each one of the units 7.1 analog outputs are equipped with their own digital to analog converters. Video comes by the way of one of the industries leading image processors and is fed over two HDMI 1.3a jacks. This AV wunderkind even allows for HDMI breakup, allowing one HDMI single to feed the video and the other the audio.
Obvously, this Pioneer Elite isn’t going to come cheap. But then again, AV elitists have been paying top dollar for equipment as long as it’s been made. Ready? $2,200 and available soon.
Hands on treatment to come at CEDIA.
via Gizmodo
Pioneer’s stunning PDP-LX6090 Kuro plasma was just recognized at EISA by winning “European Plasma-TV 2008-2009.” HD enthusiests have known for a while that the Kuro line of plasma TVs are top notch and now there is a blue ribbon to prove it. The blacks are, well, black and guess about the whites. Yeah, they are white. The judges agrees.
Thanks to an amazingly low black level – Pioneer calls it KURO – this set’s contrast ratio is sky-high. The result is an impression of immense depth and crisp detailing, to a level and quality not seen before on a plasma TV.
It’s to bad that big box stores jack up the brightness and contrast on their sets. Doing that destroys what HDTVs like this one is all about. Anyways, congrats Pioneer. You sure do know how to make one hell of a HDTV.
Pioneer announced plans for a 500GB 16 layer optical disc, only a month after it said it was developing a 400GB version. Oh, and the latest mammoth disc will have the same potential Blu-ray compatibility.
Brendan Sheridan, division product manager at Pioneer Multimedia, said:
“While Blu-ray discs, offering both 25GB and 50GB, are sufficient for users’ current demands, we envision the need for a technology that can support far greater capacities as HD streaming in particular becomes commonplace and users build larger files of digital content. The multi-layered method is compatible with Blu-ray devices providing a long term future for the technology and is more easily produced when compared to competing technologies such as holographic storage.”
The discs are still in development and Pioneer said it could be up to four years before the 500GB becomes available.
via Trusted Reviews
Pioneer announced Tuesday that they plan to have a Blu-ray recorder out by the end of the year in Japan. They plan to accomplish this with help from Sharp, Pioneer’s top shareholder. This comes as no surprise since the demand for Blu-ray recorders is likely jump since the format war is over, although like the players themselves, sales will almost certainly be below expectations.
At this time there is no information on pricing or specs, but I’m sure they’re working to keep things competitive. It’s surprising they didn’t try to put these out before now — perhaps the costs were prohibitive and would reflect poorly on the Blu-Ray brand?
The HD Guru recently reviewed the 50-inch Pioneer Elite Kuro PRO-111FD and, after putting the $5,000 premium plasma through its paces, called it “simply the best” HDTV he’s ever tested. Why so good, you ask?
Well, the black levels are so dark that the HD Guru’s current test equipment couldn’t even measure them, the energy consumption levels are pretty admirable, and the color saturation has improved over previous models. The Pioneer isn’t cheap, though, so you’ll have to decide A) If you have a lot of money and B) If you have a significant other who will let you spend a lot of that money on a TV. I have neither.
