New Pioneer Blu-ray players get (approximate) pricing
Pioneer announced three new Blu-ray players back at CES 2009, but without pricing it was hard for us to gauge whether they were a good value. This morning we saw a story over at Big Picture Big Sound with pricing for the players, and after confirming with Pioneer, we were able to at least get some official price estimates. The BDP-120 (less $300 MSRP), BDP-320 (less than $400), BDP-23FD ($600, confirmed) are all set to come out in April, and their pricing puts them on par with Blu-ray players we saw at the end of 2008.
A full rundown of the players is available on our initial CES blog post, but the new pricing information doesn't change our opinion that the BDP-120 looks to be the best deal of the bunch for most people. It matches up features-wise with Panasonic's excellent DMP-BD35, and if it can match that unit's rock solid performance, it looks to be a good value. On the downside, the BDP-120 lacks the extras that we've seen on other newly announced Blu-ray players, such as Netflix streaming or Wi-Fi connectivity on new Samsung and LG players.
(Sources: Big Picture Big Sound via Engadget HD)
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First, we just wanted a player that could support 2.0 (even though BD-Live is uselss), and now we are wanting crap like NetFlix streaming.
I'll admit WiFi is kind of nice, though going to be difficult to use once you embed that player in a rack of other equipment and cables. Guess it is for those installs where the unit sits out in the open.