News

After teasing its new high-end 4K Blu-ray player earlier this year, Pioneer has now confirmed the UDP-LX500 will hit the UK in September with a £1,000 price tag.

Describing it as a 'universal disc player that delivers the highest quality UHD Blu-ray Disc playback', the UDP-LX500 sports expected premium features such as dual HDMI outputs, a full-width chassis and Dolby Vision HDR support. There's no support for HDR10+, however.

Additional features on the spec sheet are Super Audio CD, DVD-Audio, CD and 3D BD disc playback; digital coaxial and optical outputs; front-/rear-mounted USB ports for media file playback; Ethernet; and RS-232 control.

Wi-Fi isn't included.

The brand stresses that decades of disc-spinner know-how has gone into the UDP-LX500's design. A double-layered chassis incorporating a 3mm steel plate is claimed to deliver the player rigidity and low-resonance required of the 4K format ('with the arrival of UHD Blu-ray Disc, players now need to be able to handle high-speed rotation speeds of up to 5,000rpm'), while 'video quality improvements' are gained by attention to detail to internal circuitry.

Pioneer also says the UDP-LX500 features 'a host of advanced sound-enhancing facilities', including Pure Audio mode for music-listening over HDMI, a Direct function that disables digital audio and video circuits for when using the player's stereo analogue output (perhaps surprisingly, the deck doesn't feature a multichannel analogue output), and the brand's PQLS (Precision Quartz Lock System) to reduce jitter over an HDMI connection into compatible (Pioneer) AV receivers – the SC-LX701, SC-LX801 and SC-LX901.

Video tools include preset modes to correlate to the connected display - 'LCD TV', 'OLED' and 'Projector', presumably to account for variances in brightness capabilities. Each preset automatically switches between SDR and HDR modes depending on the input signal.

A final feature for cinephiles is the UDP-LX500's onscreen display during disc playback, which, as well as conveying standard info (bit-rate, soundmix format), offers mastering information including MaxFALL (Maximum Frame Average Light Level) and MaxCLL (Maximum Content Light Level) metadata values, if available from HDR content. 

[Updated to add in new information about player specifications]