Posted Mon Mar 29, 2010 at 11:00 AM PDT by Mike Attebery
From basic to flagship, Pioneer’s new 7.1 channel receivers have a definite iPhone focus.
iPhone and iPod connectivity has been good to Pioneer. They experienced a huge amount of growth in their sub $500 receivers, and marketing manager David Bales says it’s thanks to the iPhone. “We know that the dramatic growth was a direct result of our enhancements to convenience and connectivity options expected from Apple users,” he says.
Continuing that trend, Pioneer has added even more iPod and iPhone functionality to their receivers. iPhone owners can plug in and play music from their device, and all Bluetooth capable phones will be able to stream music, but only the iPhone gets the iControl app. When connected to a WiFi network, you’ll be able to control your receiver directly from your iPhone.
There’s plenty more to the receivers than just iPhone functionality. The VSX-920-K, coming out at $399, is a fairly inexpensive 7.1 receiver and Anchor Bay HDMI processing. The $549 VSX-1020-K sports six HDMI inputs and adds Sound Retriever AIR which is designed to help the sound of compressed audio.
The VSX-1120-K is the flagship model of the new receivers and comes out a month later than the others. It adds THX Select2 Plus certification, and switches out Anchor Bay processing for Marvell 1080p/24 processing. It’ll run $749 when it launches in June.
Source: Pioneer
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