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Pioneer plans to launch its first Blu-ray player, the BDP-LX70 in the third quarter for the Taiwan market. However, before anyone starts wondering how cheap this will sell for, it is worth thinking at the other end of the pricing scale for this player. Going by this DigiTimes report, the recommended retail price in US dollars will be US$2,421! Pioneer is showcasing it with an output resolution of 1080p at the Computex Taipei 2007.

According to Pioneer, this player will deliver master quality audio and video to exactly as the film-makers intended, including 1080p at 24Hz and Dolby TrueHD lossless audio.  For home network connectivity, the player features DLNA to allow streaming audio and video, such as MPEG2 & WMV9 video, MP3 & WMA audio and JPEG image files.  The player's physical features include a piano black glossy finish, double-layered chassis, high performance sealed components and gold-plated terminals.  For legacy playback, it plays PAL & NTSC DVDs and audio CDs. 

As the number of Hollywood Blu-ray titles grow, industry sources in Taiwan expect the 250 currently available titles to reach 500 by the year end, not to mention releases in different languages.  Amazon currently has a catalogue of 355 Blu-ray titles and 340 HD DVD titles.  At this time of writing the BBC HD DVD title Planet Earth is the only HD title in Amazon's Top 10 DVD list.  However, what is interesting is that if we look at the Top 100 selling DVD titles on Amazon, there are now 8 Blu-ray titles and no other HD DVD titles in the Top 100 at this time of writing.