Pioneer Celebrates Hollywood's Creative Visions On Black Friday Or "KURO Friday"

With consumers planning to staycation and take more vacations at home this year, Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc. is re-coining Black Friday, “KURO Friday” to celebrate the unsung heroes in Hollywood who help deliver amazing entertainment, rich with color and dynamic sound. Named after the award-wining KURO™ flat panel displays, which boast deeper black levels reproducing richer colors, KURO Friday celebrates these creative visionaries and provides exclusive insight into some of Hollywood’s most influential, behind-the-scenes professionals -- from cinematographers to sound engineers -- giving consumers a rare glimpse into their minds and what they plan on watching in their homes this holiday season.

Pioneer BDP-05FD

Over the past year, Pioneer has formed a unique partnership with many members of the creative community, including 16 critically acclaimed and award-winning professionals through the KURO Loft Hollywood. Pioneer has engaged in a dialogue at the KURO Loft to better understand the role that quality audio and video play in the artistic visions of creative professionals in a pursuit to bring home entertainment to new heights.

As part of this dialogue, Pioneer asked several award-winning creative experts to provide some insight into their art form and which Blu-ray Disc® picks best represent the pinnacle of home entertainment and why:

• Robert Harris, a film preservationist who has worked on the restoration of various films to both DVD and Blu-ray Disc, including Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus, My Fair Lady, Rear Window and Vertigo, noted his most recent project, The Godfather Trilogy, as his Blu-ray Disc pick for the holidays. “The holidays are all about family and The Godfather is the best family film ever made. Watching it on Blu-ray [Disc] allows you to view the movie as it looked on film, but in your home theater.”
• Brandon Cox, commercial and independent film cinematographer, mentioned Baraka as his choice Blu-ray Disc commenting on the film’s BD remastering that allows “every element of the original negative to be reproduced.” He explained that “Baraka is the perfect reference Blu-ray [Disc] to test picture quality” and that the film “should be watched on a larger display to get the full effect of the artist’s intentions. A smaller screen would diminish the integrity of the film.”
• David Stump, an Academy Award®-winning cinematographer who has worked on projects including Men of Honor, The One and X-Men, and most recently consulted on Quantum of Solace, chose Casino Royale: Collector’s Edition. He said that after working on one of the Bond movies, he now wants to go back and watch the entire series in order to pick his favorite James Bond. He also talked about how Blu-ray Disc enhances the home theater experience. “As a cinematographer, you paint emotions with color. Color is a part of the story and color[s] convey emotions in the players and in the actors, and it tells the audience what they’re expected to feel,” said Stump. “Blu-ray [Disc] brings to the home theater a lot of what you can see in [movie] theaters.”

Pioneer’s Blu-ray Disc players, A/V receivers and KURO displays are designed to replicate the intentions of Hollywood’s creative minds and deliver the most powerful entertainment experience in your living room or home theater. For the complete home theater package, Pioneer has purposefully created a synergy between its line of Blu-ray Disc players, A/V receivers and KURO plasma televisions by enhancing the video and sound quality when these products are installed together. With KURO Link, users can sync operations of their Blu-ray Disc players and A/V receiver using the plasma television remote control. In addition, when Pioneer’s Blu-ray Disc players are connected to one of the Elite A/V receivers, it enhances CD playback.

• Pioneer’s Blu-ray Disc players, the Elite® BDP-05FD and BDP-51FD, offer unparalleled picture and sound performance and produce 12-bit deep color with 8 bit to 12 bit color conversion to deliver a range of hues and shades resulting in pristine, realistic imagery.
• Pioneer’s top-of-the-line HD control centers, the Elite SC-07 and SC-05 A/V Receivers, connect and control all home theater devices while delivering studio quality sound performance. These models offer Pioneer’s Home Media Gallery so consumers can stream their holiday photos directly to their HDTV.
• Pioneer’s industry-leading KURO televisions, the PDP-5020FD and PDP-6020FD, include a feature called Optimum Mode, which automatically adjusts the images, color, brightness and black levels based on a room’s environment and the content being shown. This means that viewers can segue from watching The Godfather to their favorite Bowl Game, and the KURO television will do all the hard work making sure the picture quality is perfectly tuned to the image on the screen.

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BLU-RAY DISC is a registered trademark of Sony Corporation.

ACADEMY AWARD(S)®, is the registered trademark of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.