New Pioneer Blu-ray players turn up the RAM for Blu-ray
One of the most venerable names in consumer electronics, Pioneer, showed that it was still a player. No pun intended.
Like a TiVo for XM radio, Pioneer Electronics' GEX-XMP3 portable XM Satellite Radio with MP3 provides more than 170 channels of XM content, with the capability to schedule recordings of up to 75 hours of XM programs, and automatic recording of 15-30 hours of XM programs -- five channels at a time. It can also replay up to 30 minutes of live XM. In addition, it includes a microSD card slot for playing recorded music. It is available now for $279.
The company also announced several Blu-ray Disc players. The Pioneer Elite BDP-09FD plays both Blu-ray and DVD, and with a firmware upgrade, will support BD-Live.
Scheduled to come at some point in the future ("soon") are three other models: The Pioneer Elite BDP-23FD, which includes 1 GB of internal on-board memory for BD-Live content; the Pioneer BDP-320, which in addition to the 1 GB of memory includes a number of picture adjustment features; and the Pioneer BDP-120, which supports BD-Live onto a connected flash drive.
The company did not reveal prices for the players.