Pioneer has taken the wraps off its first 2011 Blu-ray player, the £170 BDP-140, and more models will be revealed at the IFA Show in Berlin later this week.
The BDP-140 offers SACD and 3D Blu-ray playback, an ethernet port for connecting to your home network, and DLNA certification. The optional Pioneer AS-WL300 wireless LAN converter enables wireless hook-up to your network if required.
There's support for numerous audio and video formats, including MKV, DiVX Plus HD, WMV and MP3, plus a JPEG viewer for photo slideshows.
Users can control the device via their smartphones using the free iControl AV2 app.
High-definition audio formats such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio can either be output as native bitstream or decoded internally and sent as uncompressed multichannel LPCM via HDMI.
SACD playback for hi-res music
Music fans are also well catered for, the BDP-140 being designed as "a refined audio player", capable of handling SACD (Super Audio CD) discs and outputting the signal via HDMI either as the DSD 1-bit stream, or high-resolution PCM at 88.2kHz/24-bit or 176.4kHz/24-bit.
If used in conjunction with a Pioneer SC-LX85 or SC-LX75 AV receiver connected via HDMI, the BDP-140 will bring two more benefits: Stream Smoother Link for video, and Sound Retriever Link for audio.
Basically, these two functions enable the receiver to access information on the original audio or video file format, and optimise the sound and vision playback accordingly.
