There were plenty of reasons why folks were looking forward to reviewing the Pioneer BDP-HD1 Blu-ray DVD player. For one, Pioneer has a track record of producing devices that deliver top quality video and audio performance. Secondly, the BDP-HD1 is the first Blu-ray player capable of an 1080p output at 24 frames per second, the frame rate at which most movies are shot, and it is also the first to add a home networking capability. Unfortunately, the Pioneer BDP-HD1 failed to live up to our expectations, especially for a unit sporting a $1,500 price tag, expensive even by Blu-ray standards.

While using the BDP-HD1 for basic Blu-ray disc playback delivered rich, high quality images, the unit's 1080p at 24 frames per second output is disappointing. While few HDTVs can support a 1080p/24 signal, those that do deliver super-smooth playback free of judders and moving artifacts. Unfortunately, there were no detectable concrete image benefits over regular 1080p output. More of a concern is the unit's performance when upconverting standard DVDs to 720p, 1080i or 1080p. In all cases, the overall picture quality was disappointing, and noticeably inferior to the results achieved by other Blu-ray players.

The BDP-HD1's home networking function, on the other hand, proved far more effective. Connect the device to a PC via the Ethernet port and you can stream MPEG and WMV movies, MP3, WMA and WAV music files and JPEG, PNG and GIF photos over the wired connection for display on your HDTV. The ease of use of the Home Media Gallery function compensates for one of the BDP-HD1's other shortcomings, namely that it is unable to play any audio CDs, including the high resolution audio formats SACD and DVD-Audio.

The Pioneer BDP-HD1 is one of the first devices to be certified by Digital Living Network Alliance, or DLNA, which in the future will enable the player to access content from similarly certified devices. With a price tag of $1,500, we would have expected the BDP-HD1 to offer HDMI 1.3, enabling the unit to send Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD in the encoded bitstream format. Despite excellent playback of Blu-ray discs, we feel that the Pioneer BDP-HD1 DVD player fails to offer enough additional features to justify the expensive price.


Pros: Excellent picture quality, first Blu-ray player to output 1080p at 24 frames per second, offers Ethernet port and home networking capability, HDMI upconversion, DLNA certified
Cons: Very expensive, cannot play audio CDs, slow load times, disappointing picture, quality when upscaling DVDs

Warranty
2-year limited