In an Australian first, SmartHouse has been able to conduct a shootout between two of the latest Blu-ray players from Sony and Pioneer. The Sony model comes in at $1,399 and the Pioneer model at a $500 premium at $1,900. The Panasonic Blu-ray offering which at launch retailed for $2,700 is now being sold at $1649 RRP, sitting in between the Sony and the Pioneer models.
The Sony BDP S1E and the Pioneer BDP-LX 70 Blu-ray players both deliver content at 24 frames per second which is the same speed that a motion picture is shot at. The difference is significant when compared to the early Blu-ray players from the likes of Samsung.
When unpacking the boxes for the two players the first thing one notices is that the Pioneer player comes with a HDMI cable as well as component video. The Sony Blu-ray player only comes with component video cables. Another noticeable difference is that the Sony Blu-ray player is bigger and takes up a much larger footprint which I think is unnecessary.
To test these two content delivery systems we set up a 1080p 52" Sharp LCD TV that has two HDMI connections. We connected both Blu-ray players to different channels via the HDMI connectors using the same Kordz HDMI cables.
