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Grim news today for home cinema fans, as the credit crunch really begins to show its teeth in the AV world. Pioneer, who make the highly-regarded Kuro range of premium TVs, will cease production this time next year in order to focus on in-car entertainment and less competitive home entertainment areas - like DJ kit.

Pioneer will also cut 30% of its workforce - a cool 10,000 jobs - and reduce its manufacturing capacity by 30%. Today’s news comes after Pioneer posted a £1bn expected loss for the year’s operations.

Until last year Pioneer focused exclusively on high quality plasma TVs, which were renouned for their deep black levels. The warning signs came in 2008, when Pioneer stopped making the plasma panels it was so well known for, instead using Panasonic panels, and releasing a new range of LCD TVs.

Pioneer remained a premium brand however. In 2008, Reevoo found that Pioneer was the most expensive TV manufacturer, with an average cost per TV of £1,258. That put the Kuro experience out of range of most TV shoppers, and may have put paid to Pioneer’s TV business.

As I said on Pioneer’s blog, this looks like an instance where the credit cruch has cut both ways. In the notoriously competive television market, the credit crunch has made it harder for Pioneer to manufacture their TVs at relatively small volumes, and it’s made it harder for shoppers to justify the Pioneer premium.

I’m sure there will be more details emerging over the next few days, but for now the message for shoppers is that 2009 could be your last chance to get your hands on a Pioneer TV, such as the Pioneer 5090 or a classic Pioneer Kuro PDP4280XD.

See Reevoo to buy, or just gaze at, the other Pioneer Kuros.

A summary of views from around the web of the Pioneer BDP-LX70.

CNet
Pros: outstanding picture quality, 1080p/24fps output, upscales non-1080p content
Cons: not HDMI 1.3, won’t play some discs with Blu-ray Profile 1.1 features

On the one hand, the LX70 deserves to have praise showered upon it for showing just what exceptional picture quality Blu-ray is capable of producing. But on the other, it’s practically impossible to recommend that anyone but the filthy rich consider spending the best part of a grand on it. It not only caters for just one side in an unresolved format war, but it’s also about to go out of date.

Read the review.

Trusted Reviews
Pros: Performance, LAN connection for viewing content from a computer
Cons: not HDMI 1.3, won’t play some discs with Blu-ray Profile 1.1 features, expensive

Overall the LX70 makes us sad. For while a big part of us wants to jump up and down and shout from the rooftops about how unprecedentedly great its HD pictures are, another big part of us tragically has no choice but to accept that unless you’ve got enough money to upgrade from this deck in just a few months time, when more fully specified Blu-ray models start to come along, you’re probably better off leaving the LX70 on the shelf.

Read the review.

TechRadar
Pros: Best performing Blu-ray player at time of release, 1080p/24fps output
Cons: Not cheap, not HDMI 1.3, won’t play some discs with Blu-ray Profile 1.1 features, expensive

In one sense £1,000 doesn’t seem a crazy amount to pay for the best-performing Blu-ray player yet - especially if you already own a recent Pioneer plasma TV and so can get the most from its 1080/24p talents. But it does seem a lot for a deck that lacks an HDMI 1.3 jack and won’t, therefore, play all the features of future Blu-ray discs.

Read the review.

HDTVorg
Pros: Excellent HD performance, build quality
Cons: Ordinary DVD performance, price

Combined with one of Pioneer’s plasma flat panel offerings, the BDP-LX70 is a compelling option, and possibly the finest HD picture you will achieve. The BDB-LX70 is a good player in any context, but at around £1000 it is just too expensive.

Read the review.

I’ve been looking at the prices you can expect to pay if you buy a TV from the top brands. This will help if you’re shopping for a TV by brand - how much can you expect to pay for a Sony these days?

This data comes from thousands of purchases from Reevoo’s retail partners in 2008.

There’s no suprises at the top and bottom of the table - you can expect to get a Matsui TV for just over £200, while the average price forked out for a Pioneer set is over £1000!

Here’s the full list:

Matsui - £209
Goodmans - £250
Hitachi - £282
Philips - £522
LG - £547
Samsung - £578
Sony - £627
Toshiba - £639
Panasonic - £717
Sharp - £841
Pioneer - £1,258

This list tells us a lot about the screen sizes where manufacturers are selling the most products. For example, Matsui make televisons from 14-42″, with prices ranging from £60-550, but on average people are paying around £200, so I’d be cautious if I was looking at a £500 Matsui - not many people are buying them.

While that’s helpful, it’s also really valuable to look how the average cost for each brand varies within a particular screen size. Here’s how things pan out in 32″ TVs:

Toshiba - £414
Hitachi - £418
Philips - £445
Sharp - £455
LG - £456
Samsung - £458
Sony - £538
Panasonic - £600

Overall the average price paid for a 32″ TV was £465. Within a screen size, you’d expect to pay more for extra features, like 3 or 4 HDMI ports rather than just 2; higher picture or sound quality; or perhaps just to get a shiny logo on the front.

Of the top manufacturers, it’s interesting to see that only Sony and Panasonic sets are selling for above the average price. Although both manufacters produce models available for around £400, they stand out as the premium brands at this screen size.

On the budget end, few manufactuers are selling 32″ for much less than £400, but Hitachi and Toshiba’s low end models are very popular, making them the value-for-money pick of the 32 inchers.

Which brand do you think offers the best value-for-money? Who do you think is just charging for their logo? Share your thoughts with other shoppers.

News just in that those clever chaps over at Pioneer have managed to produce the first 16-layer optical disk with a whopping 400GB capacity. Each layer adds 25GB to this spectacular plastic sandwich. Unfortunately they’re are read-only at the moment but they’ve all got their heads down to develop recordable versions.

If you’re wondering whether these disks will be compatible with existing Blu-ray gear, Pioneer insist they will. These prototypes will be on show on 13th July at the International Symposium on Optical Memory and Optical Data Storage 2008 in Hawaii, so we’ll hopefully know more then. We’ll keep you posted.

[CrunchGear]

It’s a sad day for fans of Pioneer’s award-winning Kuro range of plasma screens, as the company finally confirmed today that they will stop making plasma panels in-house, due to the inability to compete profitably with larger manufacturers.

Pioneer will continue to produce televisions, selling plasma and LCD sets containing screens made by other manufacturers (probably Panasonic and Sharp respectively). And for fans of Pioneer’s existing range, all is not quite lost, since the company is exploring having some of the technologies from the Kuro screens included in the 3rd party panels.

Still, if a Kuro screen is top of your wishlist, now is the time to get one, as Pioneer will discontinue the range after 2008.

AV Zombie is reporting that Pioneer are poised to stop making plasma screens. We previously posted the Asahi newspapers’ speculation about this, but a Pioneer statement put the matter to bed for a while:

"On February 28, 2008 the Asahi newspaper carried an article regarding Pioneer’s plasma display business.

"This article was not based on a Pioneer announcement or interviews
from the Asahi, but just on the basis of the journalist’s speculation.

"At the third quarter financial announcement on January 31,
2008, President Sudo announced that Pioneer is reviewing our display
business and preparing the mid-term business plan aiming to generate a
stable revenue for the business. The review is now underway, and no
details have been decided as yet. We will announce the details as soon
as they have been confirmed." (source: What HiFi)

The results of that review are due to be announced on Friday, but leaks are already circulating round the web that Pioneer plan to pull the plug on their Kuro screens, and buy plasma panels in from Matsushita Electric Industrial Co, the makers of Panasonic televisions. Other sources are indicating that Pioneer will also start selling LCD televisions with panels sourced from Sharp.

It looks like we’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the full details, but if you want a Kuro (and they are good), you may need to get one sooner rather than later.