no American words??? what no cheese burger? no fahgettaboudit?

Canadian words?? eh??

 

I don't think they are in trouble, as a matter of fact I think they are doing better then ever. They only dropped the Premier line to get rid of the 2 year warranty perhaps and to slim down their lineup. Plasma technology has reached it's limits and with the inception of the OLED market becoming mainstream around the corner there's no sense beating a dead horse. Pioneer is not going anywhere.................then again you never really know..

 

The Pioneer is a steal. What's retail on a BitOne? $800? That only leaves $400 for a top end CD player. Not gonna happen. I've been playing the decision game for a couple of months now..

Pioneer was always an 'also ran' TV company. They made nice stuff but sold no where near the volume of the big players. Same with Premier line - lower volume gear with higher costs. IMO they're playing smart.

 

OLED is going nowhere for the moment, WAAYYYY to expensive and WAYYY to short a life for the OLED element. But it is the finest screen I have ever seen (Sony sells it and Samsung has demoed it at CES 2009). I would bet the economic situation has delayed its R&D a bit.

Pioneer is in the middle of some interesting moves so though the company is sound it is imploding and it reeks of a ship that has lost its rudder. I thought Plasma still had some life left in it as it is now less expensive (did it reach its technological limits???) but here is my thought on the issue: Panasonic and Pioneer were the cornerstone of the Plasma TV industry, but LCD were getting more and more popular and the picture quality was closing in. Panasonic showed LCD TVs at CES 2008 (behind a curtain, hidden from most but still on display). So they were undermining their own dominance?? Why would they do that? Easy, the price of Plasmas were going down just so they would be price competitive with the LCD, the profit margin was too low so Sh#$-can the entire technology due to low profit!

 

that was exactly my thinking (with the bitone).

i already had the high end unit. but why go through the hassle of multiple units, all the wiriing etc.

having the all in one unit is so much more convenient, and offers pretty much everything the bit one does anyways.

forget the decision game! buy a p99!


as far as the oled/plasma thing...i could care less about a higher definition picture at this point if that is all that is really advancing.
as with videos games...high def is sweet and everything..
but i feel like there needs to be new innovated ideas. like the wii with video games. far inferior on graphics, but arguably a much better system then others.
the only thing i can think of is the new 3D tv's coming out this year.
im not sure how well they will work, but they should be fun to watch!!

 

It is sad that the industry are repeating the Beta/VHS mistake with Plasma/LCD, ie choosing the "almost as good but it's CHEAPER!!!" option.

But anyways...TVs are another topic.

Personally, if I was buyin an aftermarket deck, it would probably be the P99. Chances are though in the new car I'll get a BitOne, use the high level inputs for the factory deck, and use the accessory inputs for my Alpine Changer controller. Then I have a no-steal factory deck on display and still have line level CD quality when I want it, just like my current system.

 

the motion picture industry selected Blue-ray over HD-DVD for us (even though HD-DVD had MUCH cheaper disks...we had no vote)

The big name electronic companies decided we didnt want plasma anymore (even though it is cheaper than LCD)

The record industry stood to make more money selling CDs over records... so record production slowed

at least the market had some voice in the VHS vs BETA format war

Downloaded music sent the recording industry on its ear and I am not sure they have found a way to profit from music downloads as much as CDs (now that we know CDs are incredibly inexpensive to make). As I look through friends CD cases all I see is burt CDs...NO origionals!

3D TVs were everywhere at CES this year (so I am told) but they are not ready for prime time just yet so keep your credit card safe till it is

OLED TV is fantastic but if you used it like a regular TV it will loose OLEDs as it ages (black spots) and according to their own projections it should be garbage in 3 years. Plasma started out this way so stay tuned

 

PS -how did we get on TVs on this thread?

 

I think I am to blame for the TV topic.

back on topic though.

who knows, what kind of power supply does the p99 have? is it external like most high end deck? or have they managed to incorporate it without noise issues etc.?

 

there's no external DC/DC box