Pioneer BDP-HD1 Blu-ray player reviewed by Ted Aquino

June 27, 2008

Design:

This player received the highest design score of any next-generation player we've reviewed so far. Its silver chassis and a black front panel combine for an unusually stylish look. The front panel is glossy and is marked by only two buttons: power and disc open/close. our only complaint about the design is that the aforementioned blue light around the disc drive and the blue light next to the power button cannot be dimmed.

Remote Control:

Included remote control has a decent button layout. The remote has a centrally located directional pad surrounded by useful buttons such as Back and Pop-up Menu. We liked the separate rocker buttons for volume and channel control--for those who want to control their TV with this remote--but the placement of the playback controls is subpar. The back side of the remote is covered with a glossy finish attracting finger prints.

Features:

The main feature of this player is that it can play both HD DVD and Blu-ray Discs. It can play standard DVDs and audio CDs plus it can read MP3s and JPEG files stored on data discs. One of the more frustrating issues with Blu-ray has been the confusion over Blu-ray profiles which indicate what features a Blu-ray player supports. The good news if that this player supports Blu-ray Profile 1.1 which means it can play back picture-in-picture commentary tracks available on some newer Blu-ray Discs coming out this year. It does not currently support Blu-ray Profile 2.0--which allows for Internet-enabled features--but neither does any other current player. Soundtrack support for high-definition disc players has always been confusing but getting a handle on exactly what this player can and can't do is mind-boggling. While this player sports the Dolby TrueHD logo on the outside of the player it's only capable of decoding Dolby TrueHD soundtracks to two-channel PCM. The connectivity of this player is a bit disappointing.

Performance:

We put this player up against several other players we had on hand. We spent several hours watching footage on these players and the verdict was clear: all the players we looked at offered extremely similar image quality. Despite there being tons of very detailed scenes we found the players to be nearly equally sharp. Every time we thought we noticed a difference we'd watch it on the other player and noticed that it was there too. We decided to move on to the Mission: Impossible III disc and found more of the same. This player and indeed none of the Blu-ray players we've tested so far cannot output 1080p at 24 frames per second (1080p/24).

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