Pioneer Press Conference

Articles: Event Coverage: CES 2007

Pre-CES | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Extended Coverage

Author:
Editor:
Sponsor:
Published:

Bradford Day
Brian

Jan. 7, 2007

Specifications

Pioneer Press Conference

This morning Kurtis and I attended Pioneer's "sound.vision.soul" press conference. Our hopes were set high by the Pioneer rep who made promises of exciting and exclusive Pioneer news. After taking our seats and waiting for 15 minutes past the 9 am start time, the lights dimmed and Ken Shioda, Pioneer's general manager of product planning for plasma displays, introduced the company's latest display technology.

What is this line of new HD plasma TVs called? That's a great question, we don't know either. The as yet-to-be-named display technology promises darker black levels, richer colors, and greater performance in brightly lit rooms. How did the new name-free display technology look in person? Another great question. Unfortunately Pioneer had none of these supposedly awesome displays for the press to see. But they promised an amazing demonstration at their booth later this week. We hope the display lives up to all the hype as that was all we were treated to this morning.

Next up was Russ Johnston, senior vice president of marketing and product planning for home entertainment at Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. Mr. Johnston did a marginally better job of cluing us in on how the new plasma display technology achieves its lofty claims. Three points were stressed in the completely re-engineered display infrastructure: a new panel, color filter and ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit.

The new panel has been redesigned to incorporate a new method for discharging the plasma cells. This new cell design reduces minimum luminosity by 80% resulting in deeper blacks and better image contrast. The polymer based color filter is applied directly to the plasma panel eliminating the need for a secondary glass substrate. This method is supposed to reduce secondary reflections and reject ambient light to produce a better image in all lighting conditions. The re-designed ASIC chip features higher performance de-interlacing, improved video scaling and intelligent video noise reduction that helps to eliminate artifacts caused by MPEG compression. Again, I suppose you'll have to take their word for it for now as none of us have actually seen the "new display technology" in action. The proposed date for release of this new plasma technology is Summer 2007 here in the USA.

Also briefly mentioned were Pioneer's new Blu-ray DVD players and optical drives. Sadly there were no demonstrations of these BD-ROM combo drives or players. The drive, named the BDC-202, is touted to allow Blu-ray content playback on personal computers. With a half-height BD-ROM drive on the way, look for Pioneer's BD-ROMs to start popping up in laptops and desktops on Q2 2007. Again, a small product demonstration would have been nice, but Pioneer seems to be keeping all their eggs in one basket for display on the CES main show floor.

And finally it was time for Larry Rougas, vice president of marketing and product planning for mobile entertainment at Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc., to speak. He introduced a line of products that Pioneer is probably most associated with, in-car audio and video entertainment. We were hoping to see some cool new gadgetry but instead were treated to a fumbling speech and another series of slides. However, this presentation promised input from "real life" consumers discussing how they use in-car technology in their everyday lives. These "real life" consumers turned out to be rather laughable virtual representations of what Pioneer's marketing department feels are their primary car audio and video entertainment demographic.

Four poorly rendered virtual customers (think the Sims or Second Life characters) described how they used their various Pioneer products in their automobiles. After the first character, Jason, talked about using HD plasma and satellite radio to keep track of his sports teams, despite his nagging girlfriend, audible snickers started to spread throughout the press core. By the time the fourth cartoon customer had finished speaking no one was taking the presentation seriously. For a good chuckle, have a listen to what Pioneer's marketing department thinks today's 20-somethings sound like.

[ Download the WAV file here ]

After that nonsense Larry continued discussing some of the upcoming options for Pioneer's auto entertainment. iPod and portable media connectivity was high on the list of features. Pioneer's iBus (iPod Direct) promises integrated iPod controls on in-dash receivers but also includes USB connectivity, AUX inputs, Bluetooth for cell phones and wireless audio streaming as well as XM and Sirius satellite radio integration. GPS navigation and video entertainment display with a factory look and feel utilizing touch screen interfaces with voice guidance and customizable GUI features.

Their top of the line AVIC-Z2 Navigation unit offers point to point driving directions, advanced voice commands and active smart routing to avoid traffic. Of course, it also incorporates all the above mentioned iPod and portable media connectivity, as well it should at a price point of $2200. Further down the line is the AVH-P5900DVD sporting a customizable screen, multi-format playback, Pioneer's iBus (iPod Direct) control, iPod and DVD video playback as well as Bluetooth integration. At a more modest $1000 MSRP, the AVH-P5900 seemed squarely aimed at the car audio enthusiast market.

Again it was back to the youth market as Pioneer delved into the Pimp My Ride' generation as they showed how cool your car would look with Pioneer components. "It's all about bragging rights" was uttered more than once. Of course Pioneer has a reputation to uphold and sound quality is never far from their minds. Speaker designs utilizing air suspension and smaller enclosures are outputting higher performance and enhanced sound. Guess what, no demonstrations available.

So as you may have guessed from our report, Pioneer's press conference was little more than a commercial for their CES show floor display booth. Their booth had better be a good one as they pulled out the big name corporate guys to sing and dance with little flash to back it up. We'll definitely be swinging by to see what all the fuss is about. Stay tuned in the coming days for, what we hope, will be pictures and video of actual Pioneer products.

If you enjoyed this article, make sure to check out the rest of our extensive CES Coverage. You can help support us by Digging this article.

Subscribe to Pre-CES [more info]

Add Comment

0 User Comments

Add Comment

To add a comment without being a member, you may omit the password field, but you must enter your name (or nickname) along with your comment. * Denotes required fields.