It requires its own power supply, which could be a bit of a pain, and costs between £50 and £70. All is not lost however, as Pioneer offers an optional wireless LAN converter (AS-W元00, below), which unusually isn’t a USB dongle but a separate box that connects to both the Ethernet port and rear USB. However, the Pioneer BDP-450 doesn’t offer built-in Wi-Fi, which is disappointing given that many of its cheaper rivals do. You can control all the basic functions from a set of great looking menu screens. Pioneer BDP-450 Featuresīlu-ray players from ‘audio’ brands like Pioneer, Denon and Yamaha usually prioritise performance over flashy features, but the Pioneer BDP-450 has surprising amount of tricks up its sleeve.įirstly, the player is DLNA certified and can therefore stream music, video and photos from servers on your home network or directly from smartphones as a Digital Media Renderer.īy the same token the player can also be controlled over a network by Apple and Android smartphones and tablets such as the iPhone 5 or Samsung Galaxy S3 after installing Pioneer’s iControlAV2012 app on the device. Oddly the cheaper Pioneer BDP-150 offers more sockets, losing the second HDMI port but adding analogue stereo and composite outputs – although these aren’t essential nowadays. Joining these are an Ethernet port, coaxial digital output and a second USB port. You can select how they’re used in the setup menu – the Dual setting outputs video and audio from both the Separate mode outputs Video from the ‘Main’ port and audio from the ‘Sub’ port while Pure Audio mode outputs audio from the Sub port and nothing from the Main. The dual HDMIs can also be used to feed two displays simultaneously. You can use one of these outputs to feed 3D pictures to your TV, while feeding audio bitstreams separately to the AV receiver. You will, however, find two HDMI outputs, which is primarily intended to help owners of non-3D AV receivers. ![]() For example, we’d have expected multichannel and stereo outputs to cater for music purists with ageing amps, but you get neither. On the back of the Pioneer BDP-450 are fewer connections than we expected given Pioneer’s audio-centric heritage. Pick it up and the Pioneer BDP-450 feels lighter than you might expect given its size, but build quality is sound thanks to the firmly screwed aluminium top cover and fascia. The disc tray is placed in the middle, above a large LED display with lettering that’s easy to read from the sofa. There are four buttons – power, play, stop and disc tray open/close – plus a USB port for media playback. The black aluminium faceplate has a brushed effect that shimmers alluringly in the light, and front panel clutter is kept to a minimum. It may be big but it’s also beautifully styled. With its 90mm height and 252mm depth, there’s no concession to discretion or space-efficiency – it’s a plus size player that wants to be noticed. ![]() It’s also network-ready, which means you can also stream content from the internet and your own media servers.ĭesign-wise, the Pioneer BDP-450 is a chunky old-school Blu-ray player just like mama used to make, and we love that. It’s the step-up version of the Pioneer BDP-150, adding more powerful video processing and features like dual HDMIs and DVD-Audio playback. ![]() The Pioneer BDP-450 is one of two new Blu-ray players in Pioneer’s current range.
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