Pioneer BDP-LX71

Although it looks like something from the 1980s, this Pioneer BDP-LX71 is actually a very modern profile 1.1 Blu-ray player. Of course, being a Pioneer it's not the cheapest player you'll ever consider, but it should offer quality not available elsewhere. Although at first glance the player looks huge, it's designed this way deliberately. For a start, it fits in with all the other Pioneer equipment in the range. Meaning your AV rack should look neat and tidy if you stick to Pioneer hardware. You'll also notice a symmetry to the layout that's very pleasing. You also get these delightful touch sensitive buttons, that keep the front of the player almost totally unbroken. The outputs alone tell us that it's a high end machine. Analogue 7.1 audio out means that you can let the player handle the decoding of Dolby TrueHD audio, and pass it directly to an audio amplifier. Handy if your home cinema amp doesn't have HDMI inputs. We do want to mention at this point that although the Pioneer has Analogue 7.1 audio outputs, it can't internally decode DTS-HD Master audio. That means, if you want the best audio on Blu-ray, you'll need to use an external decoder connected via HDMI. There are also component, composite and s-video sockets for video output and both optical and coaxial digital audio outputs for sending audio to an AV receiver. So, how does this player perform, well the first test we do when we get a new Blu-ray player in, is find out how long it takes to go from on, with the disc tray open to playing the studio ident on our Vantage Point test disc. The quickest player we've seen has been the PlayStation 3, which managed an impressive time of 42 seconds. The Pioneer is significantly slower than that, and takes a whopping 1 minute 54 seconds to do the same thing. By way of reference, the 180 pound Samsung BD-P1500 does the same thing in 1 minute 9 seconds. Although it's not quick, the picture quality out of this player is truly a thing to be celebrated. Everything looks stunning and as you would expect from any Blu-ray player, movies look stunning with brilliant colours and amazing detail. We also love the Source Direct mode, which takes the signal written to the disc and passes it, untouched, to the TV. Great for people who want to see a movie in the form it was written to the disc by the studio. As we hoped, the sound quality is also excellent and through our Onkyo AV receiver and Klipsch speaker system our minds were blown by the beautiful, detailed sound. Making this player the ideal choice for audiophiles who want high-quality sound from Blu-ray's lossless soundtracks. Okay, it's not the cheapest player, but it does perform brilliantly, interactive Blu-ray discs are a bit sluggish, but the other player menu systems are so simple that even the most technophobic will be able to cope. I'm Ian Morris for CNET UK and this is the Pioneer BDP-LX71