Official Pioneer Elite BDP-05FD & BDP-51FD Owners Thread / Vs 1.32 DTS-HD MA - Page 3

Just called Pioneer with case number, and they confirmed that 1.0 was sent out to me via US mail on 8/6. Should be in my hands by Wednesday.

Yesterday, I bought the 51 FD at a local Best Buy... It came with the 0.80 firmware..
From the outside of the box, there isn't any label or something to tell that is a demo unit. It is packed like any other retail blu ray player.. I don't believe this story that there
are two units... I believe that the only difference between these units and the so call
retail store units is the firmware...

Nice! I called today too from work..didn't have my serial # handy but they did give me a case #.

Wow if you dont have it yet that means they cheaped out and used media mail instead of first class! No wonder its taking forever for some people!

Ruined,

I call today to get the firmware and they told me they ran out of disks.. They gave me a case number, etc.. and they will send it to me as soon as they have more... So I guess that this is also part of the delay...

Odd. I live 30-40 minutes from Long Beach and I still haven't received my disc... media mail or not, I should receive it in a day, two at the latest.

So it's a race for me then and others too. Will updated FM disc arrive first or will the players with final version arrive in BB stores first ?

That is simply amazing!!! How many units has BB sold, and of those sold, how many people have called in the last week to ask for updated firmware? I can't imagine that many people even know about the update. Maybe AVS has more lurkers than one might imagine

After picking up my player on Sat, I called this am for my updated disc and they said nothing about being out of discs. Guess time will tell...

Mine was sent out last Wed came today in good old US Mail. Had player since August 4th had a few problems with standard DVD freezing or studdering, all blu played fine. Played straight thru. New Rolling Stones, and Starship troupers heavy BD-J. Loaded firmware today reviewed the SD's I had problems with, now work fine. Pic seems sharper and better than any Blu player I have tried. Just the load times seem a bit slow. Had Sony 350 for about a week had much faster load times, that is the only thing I liked better about it.

As far as there being different hardware for so called demo units, and new retail units, I believe that is not true. Seems like a lot of trouble, expense, and very bad publicity for both Pioneer and Best Buy.

I do not think it is so wrong that a few of these units were out early, in fact kind of fun. I like my 51 so much I might trade up to the 05. Unfortunately a lot of negative speculation is comming from people who do not have the unit yet. Even those that have it and have had a few issues, realize what a great unit it is. Actually where is the risk if you did get it at BB with the return policy.

I still don't understand why they won't post the fricken' firmware on their Web site.

i did ask this to the cust rep and was told it might be out at the end of the month. i take it with a grain of salt but he does know about the BB fiasco.

I just had a great conversation with a customer service rep at Pioneer. He said the customer service department at Pioneer headquarters had a staff meeting with the engineers regarding the 51d best buy issue. Engineering stated that the 51fd units Pioneer currently has on hand and getting ready to ship to retailers are no different than the demo units at best buy. The hardware is identical. Only the firmware will be updated. Good news for us that were having second thoughts.

That sounds encouraging! Now someone from Pioneer just needs to give the people at that Pioneer store a call....
--Bob

called Pio today to order my FW disc. In talking with the rep, he said that they've been gathering the discs and mailing them en masse twice a week. So just because you ask for a disc doesn't mean it's going out that day or even the next. Not saying that that is any real reason for some of the delays people have been experiencing, but it's possible.

Also, the rep did confirm that all future FW updates will be posted on their site. Only this one isn't. In a way, I can see their side of it. From a certain point of view...it's not an update...it's just THE ONE. Some of us just so happened to get players before we were meant to, and this is how they're handling it. Kinda makes sense to me, so I won't knock them for it. They're doing what they have to to remedy what was clearly a botched product launch.

IMO half the Pioneer phone customer service department needs a refresher

I can verify that the HD1 "demo" units were exactly the same hardware and only needed a firmware upgrade to become "real" units.

Well, I'm pretty sure our man in Scarsdale (Robert) answered this last week, but as that post is currently MIA ... does anyone have any info from VE as to when they may start shipping the 51FD preorders?

Mine, in particular ....

Pioneer Rep I spoke to today said final FM will eventually be posted to web site but he did say that it was at least 2 weeks out.

How about trying a profile 2.0 disc on this thing? How does it handle the web options (ie. does it simply not display the option, grey it out, or throw an ugly-arse java exception)?

are there any benchmarks out yet with the new pioneer bd players?

Let me say Pioneer customer service is a complete joke. I've never dealt with such incompetency. Toshiba and Panasonic make them look really bad in comparison.

On any rate, I've been on the phone and have been transferred to customer service, parts, and operations. None of them claimed to mail out firmware updates and two people told me there is no such thing as a 1.0 update for the 51FD. Finally, the fifth person I spoke to finally understood and said they will be shipping the disc to me this week.

Pioneer, overall, really seems to be a very confused company today. The PQ and performance of the 51FD better make up for it.

For those that got the disc. How about creating an ISO image and post it somewhere so everybody have access to it.

Interesting, when I called Pioneer last week and told the guy what the screen said, his response was "oh, you bought a BDP-51FD from best buy" and then took down my name and address and gave me a case number.

Rememer, if it wasn't for BB's confusion we would not have to call to get the FW to begin with, because we wouldn't even have the wrong FW. I think one person here has received their 51fd with proper FW. If it wasn't for BB's screwup he would be the only person to have one in his hands. Pioneer is only guilty of pushing back the release date on these players.

Brian

Edit - This wasn't directed at you DavidHir. There's just a general atmoshphere that Pioneer can't get their stuff together because people got the wrong FW. So far the PQ on BD's is very nice, better than my Sammy 1200.

I called earlier today and it was a very quick conversation. The woman I talked to knew all about the firmware issue and took my name and address and said they would mail me the disk. It was about a five minute conversation and I was pretty happy with how quick the conversation was. Now hopefully things get cleared up soon as to whether us with the demo units have the same hardware as the retail versions.

I'm a little floored by the 3-second layer change that Ruined is reporting on SD DVD's... one would think that this would be better on a unit of this caliber, and this far into the maturity of optical video formats.

I'm fairly certain my Panasonic RP82 is about a second faster with layer changes (which are nonetheless still very noticable). At any rate, I am definitely planning on keeping the Panny in place, partly because of its DVD-Audio capability, and because its Faroudja de-interlacer provides excellent PQ with SD-DVD's.

I ordered my unit from the Pioneer store last week and it was delivered today. I confirmed that I have FW 1.00. I played two discs, Happy Feet and Fool's Gold, not the greatest discs but that is all I had available. The latter was a bd-re disc and played fine.

I am quite pleased thus far with the unit, playing on my 5020. I assume that setting this to source direct is correct over auto? Any other specific settings I should be aware of?

Thanks

Jim

That 3-second change was on Big Trouble in Little China btw.

Congratulations, jlenz! It's a beautiful piece of equipment, isn't it? You don't realize it until you see it in person.
I put mine connected as source direct, but I don't think it matters if you have it on auto since you're connected to a Pioneer PDP... I tried it both ways on my PRO-110FD and it auto connected correctly 1080p/24. However, based on the posts here, I left it source direct.

Is the layer change the same amount of time on all DVDs?