Pioneer's Blu-ray player trio gets official in the US

Well, that didn't take long, now did it? Right on the heels of the UK announcement, Pioneer's trifecta of Profile 2.0 Blu-ray decks -- the BDP-120, BDP-320 and pictured BDP-23FD (known as the BDP-LX52 in European trim) -- got their official US intro to the tune of $299, $399 and $599, respectively. The specs from the January peek at these models remain intact, but covering three price brackets requires some points of differentiation; in this case provided by various video processing magic, onboard persistent storage for the BDP-320 and BDP-23FD, and missing 7.1-channel analog outs on the BDP-120. Oh yeah, and you just know that the BDP-23FD gets that swank Elite badging.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 5th 2009 3:16PM]

We found it funny, that upon cracking open the 320FD to add an IR bug, that the onboard storage was merely a Sansdisk SD card attached to the board.

[Woody Posted Jun 5th 2009 9:29PM]

elite or no elite, the pioneer blu ray players are still way too slow at loading and general navigation. it's a shame.

[(Unverified) Posted Jun 6th 2009 11:15AM]

If you want speed, you get PS3, if you want quality you get Pioneer or Denon.

[DrXym Posted Jun 7th 2009 8:59AM]

That remark makes no sense. Are Pioneer and Denon premium brands or not? If they are, then why are they using underpowered SoCs in comparison to "lesser" brands?