Pioneer sets trio of Blu-ray players loose; $299 to $599

Pioneer has announced and made available three new Profile 2.0 Blu-ray players: the Pioneer Elite BDP-23FD, along with the Pioneer BDP-120 and BDP-320.

The three players tailor their features and capabilities according to price:

The $599 Elite BDP-23FD features KURO Link Picture Mode and Precision Quartz Lock System Multi (PQLS) for better image quality and jitter-free playback. The company says it also has "professional-grade" internal components.

The $399 BDP-320 model features 48-bit Deep Color Support, three Video Noise Reduction Circuits and a Picture Control Suite offering 13 image adjustment capabilities.

The entry-level $299 Pioneer BDP-120 unit rounds out the bottom, doing everything a Blu-ray player needs to do without too much concern for extraneous features.

All three support BD-Live, but only the top two models carry 1GB of internal on-board memory, while the BDP-120 makes use of a Sandisk 1GB USB flash drive. All three players feature an integrated USB port for use with compatible flash drives and hard disk drives to provide further storage capacity for BD-Live content.

All three players are available now at retail stories nationwide.