Heavy Performer

Right now, you can get Blu-ray players for less than $200.

Well, you can, but do those players offer you onboard decoding of all the audio formats, upconverting of the 8-bit video to 16-bit, Marvell Qdeo processing, eight Wolfson DACS, tank-like build quality and pretty much everything else you can think of to eke out every last bit of performance?

That was a rhetorical question.

Beefcake

At just over 30 pounds, the BDP-09FD is nearly as heavy as the Rotel RSX-1560 receiver I reviewed here.

Just as the low weight of the RSX-1560 is impressive given its specs, the tonnage of the BDP-09FD makes it an outlier in its product category.

It's important, believe it or not, to make a high-end product feel like a high-end product. There was a time when manufacturers put sheets of lead at the bottom of a product to make it heavier (therefore feeling more "expensive").

Not that the BDP-09FD needs lead to feel hefty. It does that with its own guts and chassis. Pioneer really got the feel of it right, from the disc tray to the solidity of the unit itself.

Inside, there's a toroidal power transformer similar to what you'd find in a good power amp or receiver. There is even a power supply with massive capacitors dedicated to just the analog audio stage. In looking at the whole parts list, two words come to mind.

Glorious Overkill

With the BDP-09FD, Pioneer seems to have decided to go all out in making the ultimate Blu-ray player. A similar attitude brought us the KURO plasmas (may they rest in peace). The question is, and this is one many companies struggle with: How do you make a high-end version of a commodity product?

The first step is making it look and feel the part, which, as mentioned, they've pulled off. The bigger issue then is the performance.

“But I thought Blu-ray was perfect,” you say. Well, sort of. The potential is there for the content on Blu-ray to be perfect. Let's say you have that perfect disc in your hand, can your player and display re-create that disc in all its perfection? Pioneer is betting no, and has a bunch of do-dads to clean it up before you send it to your display.

The first is an upconversion from the 8-bit video on the Blu-ray to 16-bit. This smoothes out the transitions between different shades of gray (and therefore, allowing more shades of colors). While this can be transmitted over HDMI, chances are your TV is going to neuter it back down to 8-bit to process it again; though, I suppose we can blame that on your display.

Suffice it to say, you'd be getting the best possible video to your TV. There are also extensive video adjustments and noise reduction circuitry. Sure most people wouldn't need this level of adjustment, but it's helpful in certain installs and probably won't hurt.

The real überness of the BDP-09FD lies elsewhere.
    
Powerhouse

For the foreseeable future, most people's movie collections are going to be predominantly DVD. The BDP-09FD makes DVD look as good as just about any consumer product I've seen. Using Marvell's Qdeo chipset, it does so well on every processing test that you step away and wonder why other products can't do this well.

De-interlacing all content is a no brainer, as is pickup of the 3:2 sequence from 480i and 1080i content. Where the BDP-09FD is really over the top is with diagonal lines. On lesser processers (either in your TV or in your BD player), diagonal lines can get the much despised "jaggies," as in, jagged steps instead of a smooth diagonal line. With both SD and HD content, the BDP-09FD does a better job creating a diagonal line, no jaggies, than any product that comes to mind.

With the waving flag test on the Silicon Optix test DVD, a test of video processing, the BDP-09FD creates a smooth flag with lots of detail. Nearly flawless.

Detail with scaled DVD content is excellent as well.

Audiophile

Adding a whole other level to the performance is the audio quality. With the aforementioned dedicated power supply for the audio, plus eight 24-bit/192kHz Wolfson DACs, the audio sound quality was clearly an important aspect in product development. Sure you can send all the audio via HDMI to your receiver or pre/pro, but depending on what you're using, the analog out of the BDP-09FD might actually sound better. When was the last time you thought that was possible with a Blu-ray player?

Using the analog outputs, I found the audio quality with CDs to be a bit more natural and smooth. A little less brittle. Again, this will depend a lot on what you're using as a receiver or pre/pro, but it's worth checking out. The BDP-09FD will also decode, on board, all the latest audio formats. So if your processor doesn't have HDMI in, no worries. Again, thanks to the DACs, you may want to go analog.

Sadly, from the company that brought us the first "combo" player, the BDP-09FD doesn't play DVD-Audio or SACD. These are essentially dead formats, but I still have a collection of discs I love, and I'd love to hear them on a player like this.

If you have a Pioneer receiver, the Precision Quartz Lock System (PQLS) eliminates jitter across HDMI for that extra bit of performance.

Ultimate

The BDP-09FD is a niche product to be sure. After all, you can get perfectly acceptable Blu-ray performance from any player. But that's not what this product is about.

This is for those people who want the absolute best performance from every aspect of their system, and that extra little bit of video and sound quality. For those people, this is the source they should be looking at first. How do you build a high-end version of a commodity product?

This is how.

 
PRICE: $2,200
CONTACT: 800.421.1404, Pioneerelectronics.com