Pioneer BDP-330 Blu-ray player

If a recent survey for HP is to be believed, Britons remain committed to packaged media, with 75 percent wanting hard copies of films in a box. So despite the advance of video streaming and downloading, perhaps it’s not yet time to write off conventional disc players, like Pioneer’s latest Blu-ray offering, the BDP-330. …

[Matthew 17]

How fast is it?

I recently rented a film from iTunes on my ATV, I had to wait 4 hours before I could watch it, clearly downloads aren't really practical yet, however the wait was nearly as long as it take for my Sony BDP-S550 to power up, eject the drawer, load the disc and start the film.

[StooMonster]

Source Direct

Can't find mention in your review anywhere, does it have Source Direct for video output?

[Anonymous Coward]

BD player vs PS3

As much as I hate Sony I can't understand how one could buy a BD player that doesn't have wi-fi nor any internal memory but costs more than a PS3 (that has the same or better audio or video specs).

[Richard Lloyd]

Still far too expensive

Blu-Ray has been around for about 4 years now and it's still impossible to find a player (let alone a recorder) for under 50 pounds. At almost 300 pounds, the pricing of this should be considered "high-level" and not "mid-level" nowadays, but the prices of players/recorders have been moving far too slowly downwards really.

The problem Blu-Ray is now having is that average net speeds have been climbing more quickly than its price has been dropping, so there will come a point in the next few years where end-users will consider HD movie downloads as a viable option (they aren't really at the moment).

Blu-Ray movie discs need to cost the *same* as DVDs, IMHO - this would encourage more people to buy Blu-Ray players and drive the price of the players down more quickly. There has to be several "cheap and cheerful" 50 quid Blu-Ray players out on the market in the next year or two or Net downloads will start to hit the Blu-Ray market, IMHO. And I haven't even touched on the fact that most people think DVDs are "good enough" (especially whilst the discs and players are notably cheaper than Blu-Rays).