Pioneer's new Blu-ray players priced and dated

Pioneer's new Blu-ray range
Pioneer's new Blu-ray range

Pioneer today hosted a press day at London's acclaimed AIR Studios, where the Japanese company showed off its impressive new line of Blu-ray players.

The flagship BDP-LX52 is the most eye-opening of the bunch. It's the first player (alongside the 320) to use Pioneer's Jitter-free uncompressed LPCM audio over HDMI, thanks to something called PQLS – Pioneer's Precision Quartz Lock System.

As with most Blu-ray players now hitting shops, the LX52 is BD-Live compatible and also uses Kuro Link, so if you have a sadly dearly departed Kuro TV, then you are in luck.

Audio support

The BDP-320 and 120 make up the mid and entry level players of the new range. Both support advanced audio standards such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS‑HD Master Audio and the 120 is speedy – with a start-up time of just 0.8 seconds.

When it comes to colour, the BDP-120 puts in an impressive performance looking after 32-bit Deep Colour support. But it is the 320 and LX52 that are the real winners, with and 48-bit Deep Colour support.

Couple this with noise reduction and your Blu-ray picture will look very special indeed.

The Pioneer BDP-320 is available now, with the BDP-LX52 and BDP-120 out at the back-end of July.

Price-wise, while there's nothing firm, Pioneer told TechRadar that you should be looking at £549 for the LX52, £440 for the 320 and a very reasonable £270 for the entry level 120.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.