Pioneer DV-AX5AVi DVD player with HDMI

Pioneer will have a new DVD player in their lineup shipping early November that also can play back DVD-Audio and SACD. Similar to recently announced Marantz, DV-AX5AVi features 10bit video processing but Pioneer uses VQE9, video chip of their own production. By the way, VQE stands for Video Quality Enhancer. High-definition outputs supported are 1080p, 1080i, and 720p over HDMI as well as enhanced and standard definition. The device can playback DVD-R and DVD-RW and features a i.Link (FireWire) port.
Audio can be upscaled up to 192KHz/24bit on all channel simultaneously. One interesting fact about this DVD player is that its DVD spinner plate is made thicker and thus heavier to eliminate vibration while rotating the disk. This makes the unit quieter and unnecessary vibration does not affect laser head reading capabilities. DV-AX5AVi sports gold plated terminals
The unit is priced at 1500 EUR (around US $1860) and don't expect in US yet.

Source: AkihabaraNews and Pioneer Japan

Filed with tags: Pioneer DV-AX5AVi, High-end DVD player, HDMI DVD player