Pioneer @ CEDIA - Blu-ray player availability confirmed - Take 2

Yesterday we posted that the Pioneer's Blu-ray player was going to be aviable within a few weeks which was in-line with everything we have heard for months. However we were flooded with comments about Audioholic's, another popular AV coverage site closely releated to AVSforum.com, post that stated very clearly that no, it is coming out Spring '07. Let us tell you that this was news to Chris Walker, Pioneer's Senior Poduct Planning Manager, when we talked to him today. Spring of '07 is simply not true and according to everyone at the CEDIA Pioneer booth, this fall is their launch target and not Spring of '07.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 16th 2006 6:20AM]

Quick question: Do all BD players utilize the same design setup of using a Broadcom chip that outputs 1080i only and requiring a separate chip to deinterlace to deliver a 1080P signal?

I was astonished and revolted upon hearing about how Samsung achieved 1080P output from a 1080P mastered disk, and that it employed the same Broadcom chip found in the Toshiba HD DVD player (minus the separate deinterlacer chip).

I fail to see, let alone to philosophically accept, the as!n!ne requirement of taking a progressive signal from the mastered disk and forcing interlacing into the signal only to have to remove it again to regain a progressive signal. Blind market (consumer) abuse like this should be illegal, and better reported upon by entities like HDbeat!

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 16th 2006 8:20AM]

No, the Pioneer and Panasonic both use a Sigma Designs SoC (System on Chip) solution (outputting 1080p directly) that doesn't require the external processors the Broadcom in the Samsung uses. On a side note, the new top-end Toshiba uses the same 3-step method to get 1080p that the Samsung does.