New Blu-ray player Pioneer BDP-LX80 reviewed by Aristidis Matchick.

May 29, 2008

I bought a Sigmatek BR-1000, Pioneer BDP-LX71, and PS3. In the 2 week that I've had this player, it's done a fine job on video and audio quality. I'm running it on a 45" LG connected through HDMI. I've never had any of the stutters or other audio/video glitches that others have mentioned. I've never had any of the stutters or other audio/video glitches that others have mentioned. The BR players are all updatable so it's possible to play the latest movies. However, this player has a VERY weak failure mode and upgrade procedure. This likely makes this required operation out of reach for most people on this device.

I have only had significant problems with one disk that I own and that was "Lord of War". It played the first 3/4 of the movie just fine and then started freezing up every 1-2 minutes making the movie unwatchable. For those who wonder if it will play homemade Blu-Ray DVDs I can report that I have sucessfully created a Blu-Ray DVD with menus on a 25G Single Layer BD-RE (Rewritable) disk using the LG GGW-H20L burner. Other firmware updatres are available but I haven't needed them yet. This player is good as far as disks that work on it but it does not support 48kHz/24-bit HD true sound that few blu-ray disks come with. The sound will pop out of sync with the visual. Before you buy call the manufacturer and ask if they have solved this problem by issuing a firmware (disk to put in the machine to update the harddrive) or not.

Upconversion on this player is mediocre, which is paramount if you have huge library of DVDs. I figured instead of spending $50 or so on upconvert DVD player to work with my new TV, I decided to go directly to Blu-Ray, since the Blu-Ray is now standard of HD DVDs. The upconversion is wonderful! Best part is I can use optical and take advantage of the new audio codecs. Overall, I found this player to be competent Blu-ray player and a great upconverting DVD player.

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