Official Pioneer Elite BDP-05FD & BDP-51FD Owners Thread / Vs 1.32 DTS-HD MA - Page 991

here's a first... Picked up Stupid Crazy Love Bluray combo pack with DVD... The DVD won't play... The Pio just hangs there... I had to unplug the power to get the DVD out....

Yes.

Rick R, nice comparison review, ty.

I have both as well and agree for the most part.

On my "audio only" setup [ Carver C-19 pre > McIntosh 275 amp > Klipshorn] I do hear a more significant difference than you using the Analogs of the Pioneer over the OPPO........ better soundstage and a tad crisper / tight response, but that is just my opinion.

With that said I may soon retire my above audio only gear and the Pioneer to make space for a music/video server, the kids Wii, Xbox and a wireless printer.

The joys of having a family

Gman

Oh well, I have my new (used) Yamaha player spinning my CD's and DVD-A's now. The DAC's are nice, great sound stage.

I will see how long my 51-FD can survive doing BD before the death spiral is complete.

Anyone have any review information on this Yamaha Disc Player, http://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-BD-A101...ef=pd_sxp_f_pt

I can find spec info but not much on reviews.

Thanks!

Saturn

It was a rented redbox disc. I am running 1.72 units been fine with just about every disc.

I cleaned the rental to the point it looked brand new so its not a finger print or scratch issue.....

I see a post talking about 1.72b

There is no new update to 1.72b so where is that comming fom?

Hi Gman

Yeah it really is horses for courses, personal opinion and room dynamics at the end of the day, which is why I stressed that in the opening of my comparison. Which ever I use I am getting a lot of enjoyment out of both systems, that now, after a lot of effort, produce excellent results for both multimedia and music which are equally important to me, of course I have the advantage of family having left the nest. The the 05 is doing a superb job in the second system with a pair of ageing but top end Ruark speakers and is actually better in that system than the 93 both are Pio based similar genre AVR's.

Don't do that you will regret it if you do and spend a lot of cash later just trying to get it back. It is possible as I have done to make one system do both jobs (multimedia and music) but it does take time and effort (and some cost) to get it to work properly and of course as you get older so do your ears and any small differences won't matter so much. I went through a period a few months ago where my hearing had really deteriorated gradually without my noticing till it was really bad and I realised what I was not hearing, a visit to the Doc and all back to normal but the important thing was I found out how much I had been missing when listening to the prized 05 (this was pre Oppo93), my hearing range is not that good but it is what I would describe as fairly experienced or discerning.

Rick

The 05/51 is known to be sensitive to less than perfect BDs, even if they visually appear perfect, and cause the issue you are experiencing. As a Netflix user, I could no longer tolerate this and replaced my 51 with a 320 which has been much better with rentals.

So my first thought is that your issue is with that disc and not that title (as I mentioned other users reported Rango playing fine after installing v1.72), so I would suggest trying another disc.

I think Hkan has contacts that provide him with service updates that aren't available to the public yet. It's very possible that we will never see a version 1.72b, but may instead get a later version. Regardless, it does show that Pioneer is still supporting these players.

Did anyone else have a problem playing The Green Lantern? I was watching it last night and it seemed to take a while to load (spinning disk logo for about a good 2 minutes), but it got started ok..........at the party scene where Ryan Reynolds approaches the girl, just before the helicopter incident, the image froze. I could not FF or Rew, I could only call up the menu and choose scene selections. I got past that scene and later it froze again, and I was unable to get the disk to play the rest of the movie.

PS the disk was a rental and had a major scratch. On FW1.72

Paul

That's like saying the car was in great shape except for the seized engine. The 51's error correction isn't great.

I have changed my post erk.....and yes, I am all too aware of the error correction on these players, except that I have played dirty scratched disk a lot worst than this one and the player has never given me a single problem, outside of not being able to play a disk due to needing a FW update.

Paul

Oh, OK... I've had no trouble at all with rentals except if there's a scratch. So... that was the basis of my response. Well... as you point out, as long as the fw is up to it.

I want to watch Green Lantern myself.

No problems at all, but my disc was new not a rental. Load time was not excessive about the same maybe a little longer than Avatar and it played straight through, I'm on fw 1.72

Rick

Thanks guys, I got past the freeze mark yesterday when I tried to watch the movie again. Some how it froze at the same spot and I just waited......about 8-10 seconds later it resumed play. No problems after that.
Must have been the scratch.

Paul

My 51 blue laser died last week, I'll use it as a CD player for the time it works! Too bad I loved it very much! I'll wait a few months and get the Pany 310

Not worth fixing?

Mine was $275 for just the drive assembly part.

Mine will play BD without issue but will not play CD's once it is warmed up.

I am considering a Yamaha BD1010 once reviews come out for it and see what opinions are.

I went ahead and ordered the newest update from Pioneer.

I read one of the things it helps with is Rango (keeps it from freezing at one point.)

So I'm getting it so I won't have to bother with it when I do eventually get Rango.

Does anyone know if new Pioneer players are really from Pioneer?

Anyone yet know the load times for Blu-rays on the new Pioneers?

And does anyone know if there are any real improvements in picture quality from the new players compared to the 05 and 51FD?

PQ is pretty much the same with all players for BD, so no, the new players won't have better PQ than the 05/51FD. Since these older players were excellent at upscaling SD DVDs, I don't expect the new players to do any better. What they should do better is load times and error correction (which were poor on the 05/51FD).

Interesting. It would be nice to have faster loading, however even with my current Blu-ray player, I've never noticed any issues due to poor error corrections.

Then again, I don't rent very much.

What is the "Death Sprial?"

Yeah, my BDP51 is going strong, and even if I replaced it with a newer player for BluRay watching (coincidentally I'm considering the sequentially-numbered BDP52), I'd likely keep the 51 for CD playback, due to its superior Wolfson DACs.

Why? Because I'm still using a pre-HDMI AVR with practically non-existent DACs suitable for music (although, the Onkyo 709 has caught my eye. They seem to have solved the fry-an-egg-on-it heat problem).

I'm still using mine and it's been problem free since I figured out my HDMI issue, which was cable related. I haven't had any disks from Netflix not play and they've all been blue-ray. I've never liked the boot-up speed if there's a disk in the system and overall it's somewhat slow, but the picture quality is fantastic and no issues. Mind you it's kept in a large cabinet and only gets use a few times a month.

I think it's when the drive starts rejecting discs and it progressively gets worse until the drive dies...

My 51FD will play CD's until the player is warmed up, it starts to error out and cant read any CD's. It plays BD with no issue. The unit is expensive to repair. Pioneer says the drive assembly needs to be replaced, which costs $275 by itself.

So I will see how long it will go before the BD playback becomes an issue. In the meantime, I am scouting out for a replacement player. I am leaning towards a Yamaha BD-A1010. I like the sound quality from the Yamaha players, and Pioneer has lost their edge with the Sharp merger, etc.

I still like Pioneer Elite receivers, my VSX-03 is still running strong from almost daily use.

try a cleaning disc..the lens may just be dirty....also keep an eye on audiogon.com for listings for used players

+1 Although make sure it is suitable for Bluray players and uses brush technology, don't bother with the Maxell turbo one it won't remove stubborn dirt.

The above is worth a shot for anyone with disc reading problems. Although I would suggest if the lens is dirty I would more likely expect problems with the blue laser first being a shorter wavelength and more sensitive to dirt. However depending on the contamination, although rather unlikely, it is possible with aperture constriction, for instance a hair, that might affect the longer red wavelength and let the shorter blue wavelength through.

Whatever it is worth a try considering the high cost of repair.

Rick

so i just replaced my vsx 94 with a used primare spa20... non hdmi... if i run the analog out of the bdp 51 for lossless sound, do i need to do any thing special in the menu of the 51 to make it lossless?

Thanks

You just need to chose "Analog Audio out" during the initial setup, then you can trim the output levels, sub x-over, etc.

Do any of the current 51FD or 05FD owners own the AIX Records Audio Calibration Disc/HD Music Sampler. I loaded this disc on my 05FD and it loaded to the top menu screen, but there was no menu structure.

I tried this on 3 other transports and menu structure was there.