The New Boss
IT HAS NOW been a full year since Oppo Digital ceased production of its popular Ultra HD Blu-ray player lineup. Up until that point, Oppo was one of the few high-performance player options in a market concentrated on budget models packed with streaming features. We’ve since seen a few companies step up to fill the high-end player void, among them Pioneer, a company that produced numerous reference-level players back in the regular Blu-ray and DVD days. Pioneer’s new offering, the UDP-LX500, is a universal disc player that supports playback of SACD and DVD-Audio discs. As you might expect, it sports both the Pioneer Elite logo and the high-end look and build associated with that iconic badge. At $1,099, it certainly has flagship pricing, so let’s see if it measures up.
THE BEAST
The one thing you’ll notice immediately about the LX500 is its sheer size and weight. This is an absolute beast of a player—nothing about its build quality feels cheap, and it weighs in at over 20 pounds. The machined front panel has an impressive look and feel,
