Pioneer BDP-LX91 Blu-Ray Player Review
For those who have been in the video industry for a long time, will surely say that the pioneer is one of the most respected brand names in the optical video industry. They had always played a major role in the history of the evolution of the video formats. Pioneer is one among the nine companies that are a part of the Blu-ray founders group. Here we discuss on Pioneer’s BDP-LX91, which is the latest hi-end model of the company that can almost be labelled as the reference model of Pioneer. The LX91 is the first Pioneer Blu-ray player to be tuned by London’s famous Air Studios. It is also Pioneer’s first Profile 2.0 and BD-Live compatible machine that comes complete with an Ethernet socket for internet connectivity.
The Pioneer BDP-LX91 Blu-Ray Disc Player has lot of its features taken from its last years BDP-LX71 model that had set a trend. As soon as you unbox the product, you would get the feel that a real treat is waiting for you straight away.

Built like a tank:
Pioneer describes the design of the player as, “ Built like a tank” and the player’s design justifies it being a square glossy tank. It is a bulky device weighing 13.8 kilograms and mimics the current series of the LX-AVR in terms of balance and finish. This player is made out of solid aluminium and the design is quite modular and the unit possesses a unique architecture such that each board is designed to perform a specific job which is unlike the current Panasonic Blu-ray players that do all their functions using a single chip. May be its that, having dedicated parts for each job, makes the job done to be perfect.
Pioneer BDP-LX91 BD-Live Blu Ray Player is certainly not a style icon, but has an interesting bulky look. The facia of the unit has a glossy black finish. This gloss black that the player is having cannot be compared to that of the other gloss blacks of that of the cheap players or even that of the PS3. This gloss black is less reflective and is completely scratch proof, finger prints are unavoidable though, but you will be able to wipe them off with a soft cloth and hence not ruining the delicate appearance of the unit. A great deal of attention has been paid to built quality and the components, for instance the choice of the capacitors used and the copper plated screws, which hold the entire system together. The wiring of the system has been twisted in a way that it minimises the noise.
Remote control:
The Pioneer BDP-LX91’s remote control is a good looking one and suitably functional. The brushed steel appearance adds a lot to its good looks, so good that it makes us wonder why Pioneer did not use it on the front of the player instead of going with the glossy black finish. The directional pad has a clicky feel and the ‘OK’ key in the middle of it too.
Hefty selection of outputs:
The rear of the unit has a quite a large selection of video and audio outputs. There are two HDMI outputs of which, one can be used to send video to a display and another to output only the audio to your speaker system. You might be wondering what is the need of two separate outputs, it is because HDMI packets the audio and video signals together and hence, this kind of a set-up will reduce distortion in the audio signal. The other connectivity available are, analogue Component video outputs and standard definition S-Video and Composite outputs. The availability of the analogue 7.1 surround outputs will make the owners of slightly older versions of audio equipments happy, that would allow them to enjoy high definition output in their existing device. There are eight Wolfson digital to analogue converters which means, one for each channel, but usually the other players in the market have one digital to analogue converter (DAC) which will be shared by the channels. A feature called Precision Quartz Lock System ( PQLS) is employed which is highly significant, which allows to control the clock frequency of the Blu-ray player. The audio clock has been entirely redesigned the audio clock to reduce jitter across all the outputs. The pure audio mode shuts down the video board maximising the performance. In addition to all these audio enhancing capabilities, the analogue audio board has a dedicated power supply which would give a final touch to the finishing.
The standard definition digital outputs are available, which means one optical and coaxial outputs are available. Being a profile 2.0 player, it supports a port for LAN, which enables the device to be connected to internet and also in firmware updates. The proprietary Pioneer control jack in the rear aids in the integration with the other Pioneer products. It has an internal memory of 4GB and so completely eliminates any need of memory cards. You will be able to view the BD live downloads and corresponding features with no fuss.
Clear menus:
The Pioneer BDP-LX91 Blu-Ray DVD player’s own on-screen menus are clear, concise and easy to navigate. The videophiles will be having a great time with the player as its comes with an extensive range of video adjustments. The adjustments that you can make includes black level, gamma correction, hues and colour intensity, sharpness and many more. The adjustments that you had made can also be saved to the memory in areas call “user banks”, three of them are available in Pioneer BDP-LX91 Blu-Ray DVD Player for your use. you you do not know that well about all these terms, Pioneer has offered you an excellent option, it has offered you modes that are designed specifically for different kinds of displays like projectors, LCD screens and Plasmas and it also has a specific video output optimised for its ninth generation Kuro PDPs.
Menu description:
Having included a lot of video adjustments, we will discuss about a few of them here. The prog motion adjusts the motion detection. This option is not effective for 1080p/24 BD movies. The pure cinema has its options as, Off, On, Auto1 or Auto2. The off will keep the player in the video deinterlasing mode, the on will consider the content as progressive weather or not it is so and the two Auto modes will attempt detection of the correct film cadence. YNR and CNR are temporal noise reduction options. Sharpness High and Sharpness Mid boost the sharpness of the High frequency and Mid frequency respectively. Using the Anamorphic Zoom mode, the player can be instructed to vertically stretch 2.35:1 material to remove letterboxing, so that an anamorphic lens can be placed in front of the projector to restore correct aspect ratio on a dedicated 2.35:1 projection setup.
A master in all the three playbacks:
The videos that are played using BDP-LX91 Blu-Ray Player from Pioneer cannot look better else where and with is DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack, the whole experience will be breath taking. If this is the case with the blu-ray side of performance, the LX91 is an excellent DVD player too having no jaggies and just the perfect quality. Its abilities as a CD player are surprising. With the absence of PQLS compatible amp, the details were very smooth and the images were at their best. With PQLS switched on the results are stunning audio fiesta of sound that is rich, crisp, potent and articulate.
The player is a breeze to use. The disc loading times have been improved considerably when compared with the previous Pioneer models. Though the speed is not as much as that of the PS3, it is still doing a great job.
Picture quality:
The deepest blacks are very pure, with rich colour rendition and naturality. The motion handling has also been phenomenal. The Pioneer BDPLX91’s unique Adaptive Length Expansion technology can reproduce the colours of a movie in their purest form, as they were originally recorded in which is done by restoring the eight bit video signal from a blu-ray disc back to the higher sixteen bit deep colour signal. The above processes produce high definition (HD) images with deeper colour tones in a natural range, with smooth colour graduations through the HDMI forty eight bit deep colour format. The seller point of the player is its audio quality with its high bit rate audio. DTS-HD Master Audio are encoded at 24bit/96KHz which is a gorgeous option adopted.

HDMI implementation:
Coming back to the implementation of the HDMI, you can use the High Speed HDMI cable to maximise performance. The HDMI organisation now categorises HDMI into Cat 1 which guarantees delivery of 1080i and Cat 2 which accommodates Deep Colour and 1080p. Setting the High Speed mode to On in the player will enable a 10/12/16bit output, a value that will depend on the kind of display used.
Warranty:
Pioneer BDP-LX91 comes with one year limited warranty.
Verdict:
The Pioneer BDP-LX91 is more than just another high end player in the market. BDP-LX91 is a brilliantly constructed machine which plays 1080p/24 Blu-ray Disc as well as the best of them via HDMI. It has emerged out to be a champ in all the three departments of Blu-ray, DVD and CD with excellent audio capabilities. This is a royal player which will be a must needed addition to your home theatre. The LX 91 is expensive, but the performance, especially with picture and audio, fully justifies that price tag.
Check the Latest Blu Ray Players, other models of Pioneer Blu-Ray DVD Players in our website.
Pioneer BDP-LX91 Blu-Ray Player - Technical Specification Details
| Manufacturer | Pioneer |
| Model Name | BDP-LX91 Reference BD-Live Blu-ray Disc player |
| Product Type | Blu-Ray Disc Player |
| Dimensions ( H x W x D) | 420 x 143 x 365 mm |
| Form factor | Table top |
| Number of disc trays | One |
| Weight | 13.8 kg |
| Playable disc types | Blu-ray disc (BD-ROM, BD-R/RE) DVD-Video (DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW) AVCHD (DVD-R, DVD-R DL, DVD-RW) CD (CD-DA, DTS-CD, PC-Files |
| Playable file formats | DivX, MP3, WMA, JPEG |
| Blu-ray Profile | BD-Live Ready |
| KURO LINK | Yes |
| Remote control | Yes |
| Audio features | 192 kHz/24-bit D/A Converter Torodial Power Transformer for Audio Dolby Digital Plus DTS-HD High Resolution Audio PQLS with HDMI Dynamic Range Control Pure Audio Auto Lip Synchronous Function |
| MP3 compatible | Yes |
| Surround Sound | Yes |
| Built in Decoders | Yes |
| Video features | PureCinema Progressive Scan: PAL/NTSC Super Fine Focus Digital Filter Noise Reduction Pixel Scaler Deep Colour x.v. Colour Anamorphic Zoom |
| Photo display option | Yes |
| S-video | Yes |
| Progressive scan | Yes ( NTSC/PAL) |
| Input terminals | 1 x LAN |
| Output terminals | 2 x HDMI 1 x digital audio (coaxial / optical) 1 x component video 1 x s-video 1 x video 1 x 7.1ch Analogue Audio out 1 x Ethernet 1 x RS-232C (gold-plated terminals) |
| Power consumption | 59 Watts |
| Warranty | One Year |








