Pioneer BDP-51FD - Manual (Page 2)

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Pioneer BDP-09FD Elite Blu-ray Player (Benchmark) - Page 2
component, that I have had the opportunity
to use. Weighing over 30 lbs, the BDP-09FD
is constructed with gold plated outputs,
a solid steel base plate, internal crossbar
supports, and separate power supplies for the
audio and video sections of the player. The
player also features a Blu-ray recorder drive
mechanism, which has stricter tolerances
than the standard Blu-ray drive mechanism,
and a very attractive glossy finish that made
getting a photograph without my reflection
for this review a challenge, but didn’t distract
when it was in my AV rack.
The back panel of the Pioneer features a full
complement of outputs, notably including
dual HDMI outputs, allowing you to run
one to your display and one to a receiver/
processor, or one to a projector and one to
another display or your receiver/processor.
I hooked them up in the display/receiver
setup to make sure that nothing would cause
any loss of quality in the video section, while
still allowing me to send all the audio over
HDMI.
However, sending audio over HDMI from
this player would negate one of the major
advantages of it: a full complement of 8
Wolfson 8740 DACs operating in Dual
mode, one of every channel, which allows
you to control all of the audio settings in the
player: Speaker distances, size and crossover,
and level adjustment while using the high
quality DAC’s which are used in Pioneer’s
Elite SC-05 and SC-07 receivers, as well as
many other high end audio products. Since
the Pioneer can internally decode all of the
new audio formats (Dolby TrueHD, DTS
Master Audio) and perform all of these
speaker level adjustments over the multi-
channel outputs, and has higher quality
DACs than most receivers and processors, I
did most of my evaluation using the analog
audio connections instead of the single
HDMI cable, but the HDMI outputs were
tested for audio as well.
Additional features found on the BDP-
09FD are an Ethernet jack for BD Live
capability and firmware updates, a feature
that was sorely missing on the BDP-51FD
that I recently reviewed. Unfortunately,
while their previous Elite Blu-ray players
could use the Ethernet port to play media
from DLNA servers on your home network,
the new Renesis chipset that Pioneer is using
for this player lacks that feature and so the
Ethernet port can only be used for BD
Live and Firmware updates. Also included
are Composite, S-Video and Component
outputs for video (since I wondered about
this, Pioneer assured me that keeping legacy
Composite and S-Video jacks on the panel
doesn’t affect the design in any negative way,
since those capabilities are built into the
chipset they use for the player), and Coaxial
and Optical outputs for audio.
For BD Live support, the BDP-09FD
features 4 GB of memory on the board in
the form of an SD HC card for downloaded
content. As most movies typically only
require around 4 MB of space, you should
be able to hold the downloadable content
for close to 1,000 discs before you run out
of room. I was unable to test what happens
if you fill this memory up but was told that
you would need to manually delete data to
make room from the Setup menu, which
unfortunately required you to delete all
of the movie information in memory, not
individual titles as the PS3 allows you to
do. This means if you do manage to fill this
memory up in the future, you would have
to completely empty it out before you could
access the content of a new disc, so hopefully
they will allow you to delete individual titles
from memory in the future.
“The Pioneer also did a good job of
standard DVD playback.”
One final feature that I was unable to test,
but was very interested in, was Pioneer’s
Precision Quartz Lock System for playing
audio CD’s. If you have a compatible
Pioneer receiver (the SC-05 and SC-07 both
work) and have the player connected over
HDMI, for CD playback the machine will
use the higher quality clock signal inside
of the receiver instead of the poorer quality
video clock inside of the BDP-09FD. This
works to eliminate jitter from the disc to the
point that Pioneer can claim that the signal
is actually jitter free, which should produce
an audible increase in audio quality. Pioneer
has also said that this is an open standard
that other manufacturers are welcome to
adopt in the future, and in the future they
plan to support this jitter reduction for
video playback as well with new products, so
hopefully this feature will become something
that other manufacturers adopt.
setuP
My previous Blu-ray player had reminded
me how wonderful it was to setup new
components now that HDMI is a standard.
I simply removed my current DVD player,
inserted the new BluRay player, attached a
single HDMI cable and power cord, and
everything was working. With the BDP-
09FD I had a lot more work to do in able
to get all of the extra performance out of it,
hooking up 5.1 analog outputs, dual HDMI
outputs (one straight to my display, and one
to my receiver for bitstreaming audio), and
an Ethernet cable.
Pioneer has built a nice setup menu that
guides you though the configuration of
the BDP-09FD in order and will grey out
selections that don’t matter for your setup
based on previous selections. After choosing
a 16x9 aspect ratio, I decided to go with
multichannel analog outputs, which opened
up another list of choices for me. First
choosing which speakers I had hooked up,
whether they were large or small, and what
crossover I would prefer for routing bass to
the subwoofer (unfortunately a single global
crossover and not an individual channel
selection), then onto how far each speaker
was from my primary listening location,
down to inches and not the more typical
half foot increments, and finally individual
channel level settings. As many receivers
and processors will bypass all internal
crossover and level settings when you use
a multichannel input, it’s very important
that Pioneer builds this functionality
into the player for those that will use the
multichannel outputs.
Next I’d configure my video settings,
including what I wanted to do with my
secondary HDMI output, if I had support
for Deep Color or Control over HDMI,
which Color Space I wanted to use for
output, and some additional options for if I
was using a Kuro display or Pioneer receiver.
Finally, one nice option that Pioneer has is