Pioneer Elite 45a or 47ai Pricing in Canada (1 Viewer)

[Martin Rendall]

Greetings fellow Canadians,

I'm wondering what decent prices for these units would be in Canada. Called by local B&M and got MRSP quotes of $800 and $1400 respectively. Quotes through boarderfree.com yielded $560 and $970 respectively.

What is a reasonable price to expect to be able to negotiate? Is the warrantee worth the extra $$$?

Thanks,
Martin.

 

[Martin Rendall]

No one, huh? Bummer.

Martin.

 

[Guy Robinson]

I have a 45a and I paid $849 (before tax) for it about 4 months ago at Whitby Audio. You can currently get the price as low as $749 I have heard. Try Downtown Audio Video In Toronto on Yonge Street. There is already a 2 year guarantee. At 4 months, this is the longest I have had a player. The guarantee as such doesn't matter much to me. 2 years is way out there. You will love this machine. I am picky and the sound quality on ALL formats is "A one". It detects and plays all formats flawlessly. I have heard about a chroma bug but I still have a 32" tube so i cannot prove this. The picture looks great to me. I use it mainly for playing DVD-A and SACD (80% combined usage) and DVD-V concerts (15% usage) and the odd movie (5% usage).

 

[Martin Rendall]

Thanks Guy! The excessive markup to Canadians is very annoying.

I would be interested to know how well the player handles non-anamorphic television. My current DVD player handles movies very well, but falls down for television show sets. With a 16:9 TV, I need the black side bars to maintain aspect.

Thanks again Guy,
Martin.

 

[Guy Robinson]

Well like I said my primary usage is not video. In fact even when I play DVD-A discs I usually shut-off the video out on the player. It is killer for audio though. I have a lot of DVD-V concerts and DVD-A discs and SACD discs (a couple of hundred in total) and all sound better on this player than the 6 or so players that I have had over the past year. Also, it is getting high ratings for CD playback which is primarily due to the Burr-Brown DA's. A few of my friends have bought this same unit based on hearing mine.

 

[Martin Rendall]

Any reason why you didn't opt for the 47ai?

Thanks again!
Martin.

 

[Guy Robinson]

Well I wasn't planning on going for the companion Pioneer receiver to hook the hi-rez up digitally. That and the better video section are really the only 2 things that differentiate the 47ai from the 45a. The section I am primarily interested in is audio so I saw no need to spend the extra dollars. I am quite happy with the 6 analog inputs as I don't want to further process the hi-rez signals in my receiver. I think that would corrupt them. Everyone talks about how they would like a pure hi-rez digital signal going into their receiver and then they complain that the SACD (DSD) in the Pioneer players may be converted to PCM before it is output. As far as I can see, the only reason to have a digital signal is to process the sound further in the receiver using DSP or something like it. This in itself would alter the pure signal. The player has everything you need, bass mangement, distance compensation and speaker balancing. Anyway, I will probably only have it for a year os so and then there will likely be something better.

 

[Martin Rendall]

Guy,

Thanks for your thoughts. Looking around, it certainly looks like the audio section between the players is almost identical. Coupling that with the low video shootout score the 47ai received anyway, the 45a seems like a no brainer.

Interestingly, buying from etronics.com through borderfree.com has a final all in cost of $680, while buying from a local B&M looks like it will be around $900. What a difference!

Martin.