Pioneer BDP-51FD - Manual (Page 4)

© Copyright 2009 Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity
www.hometheaterhifi.com
Pioneer BDP-09FD Elite Blu-ray Player (Benchmark) - Page 4
press a button on the player
as there is no button on the
remote. A couple of times
I would go start a movie,
forgetting that I had listened
to a CD the day before, and
be treated to a black screen
as the disc loaded, since
Pure Audio was disabling
the video output of the
player. I would have to wait
a couple of minutes for
the BluRay disc to get to
the main menu, then stop
it, walk up to the player,
switch off Pure Audio, then
start the disc up again and
wait a couple more minutes
for it to load once again. If
Pioneer could add a menu
setting for this based on
media type, or at least a
way to disable it from the
remote, that would be
nice.
PerForMance – VIdeo
I had been very happy
with the performance of
the Pioneer BDP-51FD
previously, and I must say
that they did a fantastic
job with Blu-ray playback
once again. Watching a
variety of movies, from
the better-than-expected
“Kung Fu Panda”, to The
“Dark Knight” and “Band
of Brothers”, the Pioneer played back
everything and looked fantastic doing it.
Looking at test patterns I would see that it
could pass BTB and WTW signals allowing
for an easy calibration to make sure I was
getting the most out of it.
Unfortunately, Blu-ray discs were still a bit
slower to load compared to my PlayStation3
console. Watching “Kung Fu Panda”, I could
get to the main menu in 1:30 on the PS3,
but it took 2:17 on the Pioneer. That didn’t
bother me too much as every player takes a
while to start on a Blu-ray disc it seems, but I
wish the Pioneer could eject a disc from being
powered off quicker than the 40 seconds it
takes right now.
With a recent Firmware update, the Pioneer
has added support for DTS-MA decoding
inside the player, so now all of the audio
formats can be decoded and sent over the 7.1
analog outputs. Sound quality from movies
was nothing short of spectacular. Band of
Brothers continued to draw me in, and the
sound of the bullets flying everywhere in
the battle scenes was fantastic. Listening to
“Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds: Live at
Radio City”, I wanted to turn it up as loud
as I could to hear all the detail from their
guitars. A few years ago I had grown tired
of Dave Matthews, but that disc on a good
player sounds so fantastic that I can keep
going back to it over and over now, and the
Pioneer brought out all of the detail in it.
The Pioneer also did a good job of standard
DVD playback. Scaling to 1080p I didn’t
detect any motion artifacts, encountered no
lip-sync issues even on some titles that people
have had issues with on other upscaling
players, and generally made a DVD look as
good as possible. I would never mistake the
upconverted picture for a true Blu-ray disc,
but it did as good a job as any player that I
have seen and that is what I am looking for.
“... impeccably built and looks
fantastic.”
With their recent firmware, Pioneer has also
finally added support for BD Live using the
players Ethernet port and 4 GB of storage.
Discs that I had tested connected quickly
and worked great, supporting all of the extra
online features that discs now offer, except
for the one Disney title that I was able to test
(WALL-E). Since this was an early release
of the firmware before it has gone through
the entire QA process, I’ve made Pioneer
aware of the issue and they should have this
resolved before it is released to the general
public, currently planned for late April. With
DTS-MA decoding and BD Live support,
the Pioneer BDP-09FD should now support
all features available on BluRay discs at this
time.
Unfortunately, one feature that I was unable
to test was the bit-depth conversion that the
Pioneer can perform internally. Color data
on DVD and BluRay discs is stored in an 8
bit format, so when you scale the picture to
a different resolution, or perform any extra
processing on the image (noise reduction,
gamma correction), you can easily introduce
errors that can be seen as unsmooth gradients
of color, or blotchy areas of an image, since
you’re only using those 8 bits per color.
The Pioneer converts everything to 16 bits
internally, and does all of the processing at 16
bits, only going back to 8 bits at the very end
of the output stage. This allows for smoother
gradients, and could allow for a better
looking upconversion for DVD sources.
Unfortunately, to output this extra detail
you would need an HDMI 1.3 compatible
display (so it can display Deep Color) and my
display does not support that unfortunately.
However, since I didn’t see any of these issues
when I was testing the player, those with
HDMI 1.3 displays might see some extra
detail that I could not.
VIdeo PerForMance (BenchMark)
The BDP-09FD performed very well
across the board on all of our benchmark
tests. Measurements with the Tektronix
Oscilloscope were taken from the component
analog video outputs measured at 1080i
resolution. The BDP-09FD showed strong
performance in our core video tests passing all
of the tests that check for chroma upsampling
error test, having no problems with Y/C
delay, and displaying a white level that is spot
on at 100 IRE. In addition the BDP-09FD
retains the full screen image and zero pixels
were cropped. The frequency response from
the analog outputs, as shown in the graph, is
very smooth throughout the spectrum with a
slight tapering off in the highest frequencies
which translates to excellent picture quality.
In our HD section of the Blu-ray benchmark
the BDP-09FD performed equally well
passing our tests for banding, and 1920x1080
pixel cropping. As a motion adaptive player,
the Pioneer was able to apply diagonal filtering
to material, thereby enhancing the image
when there are a lot of jagged or diagonal lines
present. Proper 1080 i/p conversion is a must
for a reference player and the BDP-09FD
was able to convert material with 2:2 and 3:2
cadences properly so even concert footage or
documentaries will play properly without any
loss of resolution. Since Blu-ray players have
hit the market there haven’t been that many
that have really good digital noise reduction.
The Pioneer BDP-09FD on the other hand,
has excellent digital noise reduction and has
the most robust menu I have seen to date
with individual adjustments for mosquito,
luma, and chroma noise reduction. The end
result is the ability to fine tune the picture
very precisely.
standard dVd PerForMance
Not many Blu-ray players to date also have
offered good standard DVD performance