[Wayde]

I put the Pioneer BDP-HD50-K through the paces last night with a viewing (with my son) of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles then... after bed time a viewing of the opening and theme music of Casino Royale.

I was thoroughly impressed.

I've always been something of an HD DVD guy. Not that I believe in any sort of corporate favoritism but I had been faithful since the early days of the "One Format" petition and the DVD format's committee (whatever it's called, it was a long time ago).

Ironically, my allegience to the HD DVD format resulted in me buying the expansion player for Xbox 360. My need for an updated DVD player has me saying well, lets throw in a BD player and I have all the bases covered.

I was totally impressed with the Pio BD player. The lossless soundtradck on Casino Royale blew me away. The fight scene in the bathroom that opens the film conveyed all the brutality and blood soaked bludeoning that I'm certain the director intended. The juxtopision between the polite conversation (at gunpoint) and the bathroom fight where 007 explains how he scored his early kills was a masterfully drawn on my HT system.

Make that a point for home theater over movie theater. I went to the movies to see this one when it came out and was impressed but not blown away as I was with the Blu-ray disc listening to the lossless uncompressed 5.1 soundtrack.

So, I am still in the market for a BD player. Even though I was impressed with it it's going back because it cannot do DTS-HD or Dolby TrueHD.