What this costly Blu-ray deck lacks in features, it more than makes up for in picture and sound performance

Purists' player that puts video quality before gimmicks

Pioneer ups the ante with its latest Blu-ray spinner

The Pioneer LX70A lacks the hardware to be upgraded to Blu-ray Profile 1.1, but its LAN connection does at least allow it to go online and download new firmware. This is a significant boon. While taken for granted with HD DVD, it's still rare on dedicated Blu-ray machines. It's also fully-compatible with both Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio, giving cinephiles access to every audio format in use.

The first flurry of HD players having left a seriously mixed impression, the pressure is on the next batch to really make an impact. And of all the players making their debuts, few have raised higher expectations for us than Pioneer's offering.

With the PlayStation 3 now allowing Blu-ray playback for £425, you might expect the prices of standalone Blu-ray decks to plummet. Yet the latest entrant into the burgeoning HD disc market, Pioneer's BDP-LX70, costs a cool £1,000.

Picture the scene in The Fifth Element when Zorg (Gary Oldman) opens the case delivered by the Mangalores to discover it is empty: 'I am very disappointed!' That's me that is

With a price tag of £1,000, it's just as well that Pioneer's debut Blu-ray player, the BDP-LX70, has some pretty high-end tricks up its sleeve. With 1080/24p pictures foremost among them, this is quite simply the finest Blu-ray performance we've seen