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Pioneer BDP-51FD: Review

Posted to Video Components 2009-04-17

The Pioneer BDP-51FD is the second Blu-ray offering from Pioneer and the system packs a nice punch and offers great picture quality and a solid group of offerings. The Blu-ray player offers 1080p at 24 frames per second and has on board Dolby TrueHD decoding. The large black casing is a bit of a drawback but at this point Blu-ray players are just starting to come into their own and there are not many on the market that look really sleek.

The Pioneer 51FD is a pretty standard Blu-ray player and does not offer anything over the top but it does deliver a great picture and adequate features to make the viewing experience a good one. HDMI input and analog connections are pretty standard and the formats supported again are completely mediocre. The one glaring issue with this player is the firmware problems. Firmware updates seem to fix one problem and add a couple more.

Rating:

3.0 out of 5

Value

The Pioneer 51FD has experienced some pretty significant price drops and it really is one of the most reasonably priced players on the market at the moment. It plays DVDs, Blu-ray discs and CDs. DivX is not supported and you will have to adhere to region specific rules, but overall the value is really solid.

This is not an overly complicated Blu-ray player so if you were hoping for something with all the bells and whistles you might be pretty disappointed in what you get out of the 51FD. If you are just searching for a Blu-ray player to enjoy a great movie than this one will do just fine and you will like the price tag opposed to the tags on some of its competitors. One issue is the firmware problems, which appear to be common on all Pioneer Blu-ray players right now, but there is nothing that renders this player unusable at all and the firmware issues are just a minor annoyance.

Ergonomics

This is a nice enough looking design, although a bit bulky, to say the least. It's basically a big black box that can not be camouflaged and it won't look sleek in a home audio set up. The button placement is great though and so is the screen. The bright LCD screen makes viewing a snap and the button placement is not overcomplicated.

The remote, on the other hand, is bulky. Big, long and overly complicated, there are buttons that are not even close to necessary. When one thinks of a DVD remote all you are really looking for is play, rewind, fast forward and power buttons. Pioneer has overcomplicated this remote to the max and the size just turns me off a bit. With that being said it is not a deal breaker but is something to think about when buying the product.

Summary

With that being said, the Pioneer BDP-51FD does do it's sole job well; the 1080p resolution, True24FPS (frames per second) and Jitter Reduction Circuit are good features to have. The firmware issues are a concern and although new versions have been released, it is unclear if all problems are now solved..

Pros

Bright LCD screen

Cons

Bulky remote control
No DivX support
Firmware bugs are problematic
Large cabinet