The Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD Owner's Thread... - Page 9

Originally Posted by gekke henkie

The 'modifying masters' just updated their website and, YES, the new Pioneers are now on their list of region-free (DVD) and zone-free (BD) players:
http://www.bluraymods.com/ourproduct...yer.asp?id=214

Originally Posted by jimim

There really is no way to track jitter over HDMI anyway is there? You have HDMI chip doing the transmission in the receiver? The amp never really knows what kinda shape the PCM is in when it does it's DAC conversion?

Am I correct here?

I never really knew which would have less jitter, never really thought about it cause there is so much going on with HDMI. With regular CD or lossless audio you have your source which does the DAC and reclocks and then off to the preamp or you have digital out to a DAC which will reclock and take care jitter if you are upsampling or you are at the mercy of the digital source if you DAC doesn't upsample.

Originally Posted by Ruined

Denon-link uses ethernet cable AFAIK, not HDMI. Not sure about Sony's deal.

I was just saying that to my knowledge Pioneer is the only company that has enabled virtual jitter elimination via HDMI (PQLS) for LPCM.

Originally Posted by sk20

Why not output analog from the player, thereby eliminating jitter?

The player has a first-class analog section.

Originally Posted by joerod

Just got in and will work on "tweaks" today.

Originally Posted by sk20

Why not output analog from the player, thereby eliminating jitter?

The player has a first-class analog section.

Originally Posted by jimim

Just because it has a first class analog section doesn't mean it is eliminating jitter. Maybe it is maybe it isn't. Who knows what kind of reclock they use in it when it does it DAC and upsamples the audio if necessary.

jimi

Originally Posted by alebonau

only issue with that is the pox speaker, level, distance, xover setting, bass management pio provides even in this flagship whcih would be less than ideal to get system setup properly over analog. yes you could post process but that adds an unnecessary AD/DA into the process. plus the result acheived via analog also depends on the quality of pre-pro avr used. if it has poor analog capablity, poor AD/DA dacs, power supplies etc the result will be below par and the pios lovely analog stage and power supplies and dacs etc all wasted !

Originally Posted by gbaby

I did not read his comment to mean that having a first call analog section meant eliminating jitter. What he was saying is that the jitter problem through HDMI could be solved if one used the analog section of a good blu-ray, but he was saying the analog section of the blu-ray had to equal or better the processor or receiver to make this a worth while option.

Originally Posted by sk20

I mean, why not send the analog from the player to a multichannel analog preamp with *no* digital at all, and then to the power amps?

If you have full range speakers and at least one subwoofer, you should be able to do all the bass management you need on the speakers themselves.

Now I just need to wait for an HD-SDI mod.

Originally Posted by thebland

Regarding jitter.. for 2 channel, certainly a consideration.. For multi channel BD tracks, a non issue..

Originally Posted by Fudoh

@sk20:
isn't the question here if all the "tricks" the Pio does to the picture (color upsampling, frequency-based sharpening and so on) would still apply to a HD-SDI stream taken from the machine ? On my Sony DVD all the picture "features" still apply to the SDI stream, but I always considered this "unclean" for a SDI mod. What's your thoughts on this one ?

Originally Posted by joerod

Part 1 - Intro.

It must be that crazy time again. I lock myself in the man-cave and only exit for food and the occasional need to see sunlight. For preparation I set up 3 clipboards at 3 different locations in the theater. A section is dedicated for each player where I write notes and grade them. In part 1 I am mainly going to discuss the 09FD. Part 2 tomorrow will consist of the comparison study. Your enthusiasm here at AVS drives me and makes me want to do the absolute best review I can. Thank you.

First off... The 09FD is HEAVY. That is actually an understatement. It is a tank (I think I can get away with using that word here). I was expecting it to be BIG but once you see it and pick it up in person then you know! I am pretty sure you could drop one down a flight of stairs and it wouldn't even phase it. So does size truly matter? In this case the answer is a definite YES! Let's begin with the 2 HDMI outs. Being able to send one for audio and one for video does indeed make a difference. The amount of difference may depend on your set up. I sent the MAIN HDMI to my 886 PRO while sending the SUB HDMI straight to my Sony VW200 PJ. I am still going back and forth between my VP and PJ but more on that later...

Audio... I am getting exceptional sound. I will say the absolute best I have heard in my theater to date. And that goes for using both Analog and HDMI. Bitstreaming and or decoding. I first began with King Kong (Blu ray) and I did some direct comparisons to the HD DVD using the HD805/XA2. I know the soundtracks are different but the 09FD blew the HD DVD player's out of the water. In percentage terms I would say 15% to 20% better. I know the DTS-HD Blu ray soundtrack may have played a large part but by putting in other movies it proved the 09FD is a considerable reason why the sound is this good! Without sounding (no pun intended) like I am reviewing a receiver or per/pro the soundtracks are more intense with very accurate levels. Voices have better clarity. Details in all the speakers is more evident. The soundtracks are more enveloping. I could easily tell which player is on from the sound alone! Speaking of King Kong lets segway into pic Q...

Without being to creative in trying to describe the picture I will just say the 09FD is worth every penny. I am seeing more depth to the image. I have Highspeed set to ON, YCbCr 4:4:4 enabling deep color upconversion, and of course going at 1080p/24. The higher end Blu ray players are starting to have more picture adjustments then you shake a remote at! They really do give the edge over the more cost effective players on the market. Having sharpness adjusting for High (high frequency elements) and Mid (mid frequency elements) does truly help sharpen the picture without hindering it. Same goes for the Detail (probably my favorite). It adjusts contours of the image. On a larger screen it will make a difference. For those of you keeping score there is also YNR, CNR, BNR, MNR, white & black, black level set up, Gamma correction, Hue, Chroma level and finally Prog Motion and Pure Cinema options. Not to mention you have your memory settings with Pioneers others for LCD, PJs, Kuro, Professional and etc... No matter what display you have you should be able to dial it in. The 09FD can put out a terrific image that is both vibrant and sharp as well as within the construct of the "laws" of video. It is natural yet makes very pleasing eye candy. It beat the HD805/XA2 in overall pic Q. I was pleasantly surprised that it was more than by a slight margin. I know I said comparisons would come in part 2 but I since this is a HD DVD player (the best one at that) I figured why not now.

Other things about the 09FD...The remote is just like the 05/51 series. It has a nice gloss black finish with a comfortable directional pad which is silver. I don't fuss about remotes anymore since most (like myslef) will use a universal type. The 09's remote will get the job done if you are not part of the universal remote crowd yet. It is very responsive. Yes the 09FD will need an update for BDLive to become active. That could be a factor for some who are spoiled with those Disney titles (like my family). This is definitely not a dealbreaker for my theater since Pic Q & Audio Q are my number one priorities. Though it is helpful and makes a nice shortcut when firmware updating.

Resolution Changing... This is one of (if not the) my favorite Pioneer features. Changing your resolution on the fly really can make your life easier. No stopping and going into the set up menu. This is helpful especially when you are testing! Kudos again to Pioneer for continuing this great feature.

What else... SD dvds. They look exceptional. This may be the main reason I decide to bypass my VP and go straight into my PJ. I have seen many SD dvd players and to my eyes the 09FD is the best I have witnessed. I have a SP1000 in my set up (which I will keep for slideshows before the feature presentation) and besides the dreaded layer change the 09FD is superior in every way.

Any complaints? I still don't like the fact that if you hit Stop on the remote (by accident) you have to completely reload the entire movie again and start from scratch. I wish Blu ray player remotes would lose the Stop button. These are not VCRs! Speaking of load times the 09FD is not bad. It is not as fast as a couple other players but more on that later...

Part 1 conclusions... I am enjoying the 09FD. It is very flexible especially with having two HDMIs to play with. I keep finding myself grabbing Blu ray movies to see what a difference it makes. Forgetting Sarah Marshall which to me is not one of the better looking titles (though it is funny) looked better than ever. If this player can consistently make average titles look good and good titles look great then it is a winner... TheBland may have been on to something when he saw this player at the show last year and said this may be the player to beat!

I would like to thank Robert from VE for helping expedite my 09FD so I can get this review/comparison done on AVS. I would also like to thank Chris Walker for consistently being here and not running for cover when the waters get rough. His courage to keep coming back here has won my respect! I also think the engineers at Pioneer need a thank you or at least a hard pat on the back for squeezing out every last drop of pic Q and audio Q!

Tomorrow part 2 with comparisons and some Dark Knight screen shots...

Originally Posted by gekke henkie

A.F.A.I.K. Meridian also just released their HDMI-box (HD621) that reduces the jitter issue. Selling all-digital-audio equipment, and believing that all decoding should be done in the player (needed for BD-Live), the jitter-issue with LPCM is very important for them. That's why it took them so long before they came out with this ($3K) box.

Would be nice to connect the box to the main-HDMI output of this Pioneer player and the sub-HDMI output to a calibrated Kuro-projector

Originally Posted by progprog

Paul McGowen is right. If you bitstream over HDMI, jitter just isn't an issue. The data is packetized and only clocked in the receiver/pre-pro. It seems a fair assumption by manufacturers to expect that owners with HDMI-capable equipment will decode in that receiver/pre-pro (considering that they paid for those capabilities...). All these anti-jitter devices and strategies aren't relevant.

Originally Posted by EWL5

Unless you only have HDMI 1.1 or 1.2. Then you are forced to decode in the player and send PCM over HDMI to the AVR/prepro. Then jitter again becomes an issue. There was a span of 2-3 years where HDMI 1.1 or 1.2 AVR/prepros were sold.

Originally Posted by thebland

Fortuntately, jitter is a small issue for multi channel movies soundtracks.. It is simply a buzz word more appropriate to more sophisticated audiophile recordings (primarily 2 channel). You simply won't hear any jitter induced aberations on multi channel Blu Ray soundtracks..

Unfortuntely, bitstreaming these codecs precludes use of secondary track use:

Read former Stereophile / Audio journalist Robert Harley's assessment of this issue and disadvantages of bitstreaming that many of us have been lamenting for some time...

It really makes no difference sonically where the decoding takes placein the player or in the controller. In fact, it may be advantageous to decode in the Blu-ray player rather (LPCM) than the controller because the format has the capability of mixing different audio sources on the fly during playback. An example of this is a director's commentary posted on a movie studio's website after the Blu-ray disc has been released; you can watch and listen to the movie from disc as well as hear the director's commentary streamed from the web. There are many other examples of Blu-ray's interactivityfeatures that are lost if the TrueHD-to-PCM decoding doesn't take place in the Blu-ray player.

So, when you talk about whether a controller can decode the new audio formats, remember that there are two distinct functionsunzipping of the TrueHD bitstream to PCM, and the conversion of that PCM to analog. The former is best done in the player; the latter in the controller.

I advise buying a player that has the ability to decode TrueHD bitstreams to PCM. Note that any Blu-ray player that has BDLive capability will decode TrueHD bitstream to PCM. That's because BD live involves mixing audio streams on the fly during playback, which requires decoding in the player.

Originally Posted by joerod

baddgsx, I have two Monster 35 foot cables. One is their first gen HDMI 400 and the other is their newer Monster 1000 (was a gift). Both work perfectly fine as do Monoprice cable HDMI 1.3 cables. So will th eones you posted a link to. I will also say though at the end of my Monster 1000 35 foot run I am using a Gefen HDMI SB141 (their latest one) which is HDMI 1.3 without issue. At then end of my Monster HDMI 400 35 foot run I am using their older HDMI SB 141. No issues there either...