One of its highlights is certainly the built-in 4K upscaler. This allows video signals from Blu-ray discs and DVDs to be scaled to Ultra HD. "Simply connect it to a compatible TV and experience movies in brilliant 4K resolution," says Jürgen Timm, PR and product manager at Pioneer & Onkyo GmbH.

However, the Pioneer BDP-180 can do much more – for example, streaming music and videos without an internet router. This setup is also known as an ad-hoc connection. Here, it is utilized in the form of "WiFi Direct." This allows media content from mobile devices to be shared with the Ultra HD Blu-ray player without going through the "network."

"Miracast" also enables screen mirroring with the Pioneer BDP-180. If you connect it to your home network, the player can access network drives, computers, and DLNA servers via DLNA 1.5.

The "Send to TV" feature of the new YouTube app allows videos to be streamed directly from a smartphone to the Pioneer BDP-180.

The format selection of the 3D Blu-ray player seems almost limitless. It supports mobile formats such as 3GP, FLV, MPEG, AVI, and WMV, as well as audio formats like FLAC, WMA, Apple Lossless, DSD, MP3, MKV, and DivX+HD.

In combination with a compatible Pioneer AV receiver, the functions Sound Retriever Link and Stream Smoother Link are also available. These are designed to further enhance picture and sound quality. We also find it interesting that Blu-ray discs and DVDs can be played back faster or slower without changing the pitch.