Comments on: Review: Pioneer BDP-51 Blu Ray Player

By: tomvette

tomvette — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 09:01:10 +0000

Excellent build quality and performance
I'm very pleased with this player. The build quality is excellent. The video performance is stunning and the audio performance is also outstanding. My system has electrostatic speakers and very high resolution. I compared the sound of this player to an excellent CD/SACD player that I use and found the Pioneer to produce a very natural soundstage that was deep, wide and transparent without being bright.

Highly recommended.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 07:43:45 +0000

Up to Pioneer Standards
I purchased my first Pioneer product in 1975, and this player contiues the streak of well made, easy to use audio/video products.

Was it worth the extra money? Yes.

By: humbi

humbi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:22:04 +0000

BLU-RAY-ALMOST UNIVERSAL
This Pioneer BDP-51FD player is indeed a great machine. The picture quality is VERY cinematic as advertised, and artifact free even with the factory presets. What I loved above all is its ability to play NTSC as well as PAL encoded video. It is region locked to Region 1 DVD and Region A for Blu-ray, but the ALL region discs play perfectly wether they are NTSC or PAL encoded. Many of the European imports that are region free, either standard or Blu-rays, have PAL material that will not play on my SONY Blu-ray players, but will play on this unit, just fine. I wish we had the ability make this unit region FREE altogether. It would make it a great international or “universal” player!

By: denml

denml — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 15:13:35 +0000

Just the best
After owning several blu-ray plavers, the Samsung BD-P1000, Sony S300 and S1, this is the very best. Picture is awesome and audio is just great. just buy one!.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 14:56:50 +0000

Great Player for a great price
Was concerned from reading all the other reviews that I would have difficulty with this since I am not overly techno literate. But I was able to copy the necessary upgrades to a disk and upgrade the unit when it arrived. Everything went just like the instructions and the picture and sound quality are excellent. Have only one actual BluRay disk but other DVDs look like BluRay on this unit. Same unit in Best Buy, highly recommended by their sales person was over twice as much. Thanks for making it available at such a great price. Delivery was on time too.

By: diehardfan2

diehardfan2 — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 01:09:40 +0000

Quite a deal…
After doing some research, I decided that a BD Profile 2.0 player wasn’t something that I needed or even wanted, so I starting looking for the best Profile 1.1 deal I could find. I decided on the Pioneer…just a few months ago this unit was selling for $600, $300 to my door was the price range I was looking for and got. So far its everything thats its cracked up to be, particularily after upgrading the firmware to 1.25a. Plays everything I’ve thrown into it, picture quality is incredible plus does a very nice job on audio CDs. If you have an older A/V receiver, it has analog connections so you don’t have to miss out on the new codecs. I highly recommend this unit.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:03:41 +0000

EXCEPTIONAL SOUND AND PICTURE
Bought this unit to replace a Samsung BDP-1500 which failed after 1 disk. It exhibits the signature Pioneer quality construction and finish – looks good even when turned off!

It really is a pity that they are exiting the TV business – they built by far the best units available – but you have to pay for the best and these days most people will settle for a cheaper price and lower final quality.

In this case sound quality is superb and picture is all that I hoped for. It may have cost more tahn the Samsung, but quality and flexibility of set up (outputs 7 channel analog) more than justify the cost uplift over the bargain unit.

Only negative is the slow start-up, but I’m told it is quicker than most (certainly faster than the non-starting Samsung), so that is just the price of entry to 1080P Video replay! Like the Cadillac ad claims – if you can wait for it to turn on, it will return the favor!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:20:14 +0000

MUCH better than PS3 player
I bought this blu ray player as a result of having to get rid of my PS3 because it was just too fun. Anyway, I have to say that although I can’t give a technical review of this player, I can say that just on casual visual comparison it is miles above the PS3 in image quality. I’m so happy I got this player.

By: skaren999

skaren999 — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 08:03:06 +0000

Best BD Player under $300
This is by far the best player on sale under $300 price range ($600). It’s built like a tank with outstanding picture and sound quality. I have PS3 and I can say that the picture quality of Pioneer is better. Also, it is very quiet compared to PS3. It is not BD live, but I don’t really care about that; for me, it’s the picture quality and the sound that matters. It does not internally decode DTS Master but is promised in the future with system update; for now, the player downmixes DTS Master and sends DTS signal to the receiver; however, if the receiver can decode DTS Master, there is no need to worry … the player can send a bitstream DTS Master signal to the receiver. One more thing I’d like to mention is that the player is made in Japan.

By: heybret

heybret — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 02:49:35 +0000

Nice blue-ray player but has flaws...
I've had this player for about a week. Overall it's a nice player. It's quite a bit bigger than most other players I've seen. I'd compare it to a typical home theater receiver. Mine came with 1.17 firmware so I went ahead and updated it to the most recent available from Pioneer's web site. Somewhat of a hassle, but at least its possible without returning it to a service center.

Likes

It's built like a good quality home theater component.
Noticeable picture quality improvement over DVD.
HDMI connectivity.

Dislikes

Slow boot time. Approx. 30 seconds from pushing power to being able to load a disk. With my previous dvd player, I could push power and instantly load a disk. Maybe all blue-ray players have this issue?

Menus tend to be fancier with blue-ray discs which results in slower response time when your bouncing through the menus. Not unacceptably slow, but noticeably slower than with dvd menu

The LCD can be dimmed or turned off, but other front panel lights cannot be dimmed/shut off. For some reason, they felt it was important to make the power button excessively bright which is an annoyance.

Overall, I like the player but would have looked more closely at the competition if I'd knew about the three dislikes I discovered once I bought it.