Denon's DVD-A1UD: world's first universal (SACD / DVD-A) Blu-ray player

Okay, so Denon wares aren't exactly "cheap," but you can't knock it for trying to innovate. Despite that fact that about eight people on this Earth still care about their beloved SACD / DVD-Audio collections, Denon has developed a Blu-ray player specifically for them. The DVD-A1UD is hailed as the world's first universal BD deck, and it features a black (shown after the break) or silver motif, SD / SDHC card slot, DivX support, HDMI 1.3, 1080p60 / 1080p24 output, internal decoding of DTS-HD Master Audio / Dolby TrueHD, 7.1-channel analog outputs, Denon LINK and all sorts of sophisticated pixel / audio restoration technologies. Better still, users who buy in can look forward to a Profile 2.0 update in the near future. Not surprisingly, the decked-out player will ship in Japan next month for a patently astounding ¥546,000 ($5,860), so you'll probably be stuck dreaming about it unless your ship rolls in.

[Via Impress]

[dj496 @ Dec 3rd 2008 2:28PM]

I'm still hopeful for the Oppo to add DVD-A support (even if later firmware)!

[Information Central @ Dec 3rd 2008 7:21PM]

You'd expect that every Blu-Ray player supports all three of those formats. But then you'd remember: These manufacturers never learn.

And if the record companies weren't so busy ripping people off and bitching about piracy, they'd have subsidized DVD-Audio players for cars and pushed the format in the environment where almost everyone has front and rear speakers.

[SITEiNK @ Dec 4th 2008 3:06AM]

it's not actually universal without HD DVD support.
....and support for some other optical disc formats.
maybe mostly universal.

[kjb434 @ Dec 3rd 2008 2:30PM]

DAAAAMMMMNNN!!!

That's one sweet player.

[rick @ Dec 3rd 2008 2:33PM]

That's great and all, but does it blend?

[BluVoodo @ Dec 3rd 2008 2:37PM]

$5860 in this economy? Good luck selling the player!

[Josh @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:40PM]

The people who would drop $6k on a blu-ray player aren't really affected by the economic downturn

[JerkfacedFed @ Dec 3rd 2008 4:20PM]

actually, they are probably affected much more than anyone else, but since theyre so rich they dont care. denon is awesome, but id never spend more than $30 on a bluray drive to put in a media center pc. Useless to buy somethign that reads bits off a disk

[The Realistic One @ Dec 3rd 2008 6:05PM]

slap an apple logo on the front of that beast, and the price doesn't matter. I'm not saying Denon is a bad brand, i think contrary as i have many home theater accessories from them, but suddenly everyone will "know" its the best after that fruit is stuck on it. Reminds me of when everyone "knew" that the world was flat.....

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Dec 4th 2008 2:09AM]

Just the other week, I pulled up at a stop light next to a guy who had temporary tags on a brand new Lamborghini that rolled off the lot a day earlier. He didn't seem to care too much about the economy.

[donrivella @ Dec 3rd 2008 2:41PM]

I still care about my SACD / DVD-Audio collection, but I don't really care about the price of this unit. Ouch!

[rock99rock @ Dec 3rd 2008 2:48PM]

It is unfortunate that DVD-A never took off. The quality of those tracks were unbelievable. I have the player still, but only have blueman group and The Eagles Hotel California. Would have been nice to populate that collection a little more. Ok a lot more.

[letstakeawalk @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:06PM]

I'm a big SACD fan too, the high-resolution sound can really surprise people who never heard anything better than a redbook disc. While the market isn't as big as others, there are places to support your SACD habit. I get alot off that popular auction site, but if you're looking for the good stuff there are sources:

http://www.musicdirect.com/category/2

http://www.sa-cd.net/

http://store.acousticsounds.com/sacd.cfm

True, there are more releases for the Jazz/Classical crowd, but many classic rock and newer bands are releasing their catalogues on SACD.

[Dan Davis @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:08PM]

Yup, count me as one of the 8... I only have about 10 or so, but nothing beats Dark side of the Moon on SACD!

[Andrew @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:51PM]

I am quite sure there are far more than 8 people who have SA-CDs and like to listen to them. And still keep buying them. In classical music, there are quite a few releases in this format. It's not dead. As a gadget site, how can you defend your ignorance on this subject?

[Dusty Nipples @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:56PM]

@Dan Davis, actually, the MFSL vinyl beats it ;)

[V3LOCIP3D3 @ Dec 3rd 2008 11:23PM]

How come you can't download DVD-A or SACD quality sound files from iTunes . . or even torrents (not intending to of course)? Or is there a huge conspiracy I'm not allowed to know about? I listened to SACD a while back when it was being marketed more. I was really impressed but didn't buy any equipment, thinking it would have become as big as DVDs . . . which . . it . . did not. I haven't really thought about it until I read this article.

[Information Central @ Dec 4th 2008 5:56AM]

The recording medium is basically irrelevant now, because record companies are ruining every release with dynamic compression in the mastering process. They're literally destroying our entire recorded musical heritage by going back and compressing the living crap out of everything to make it "louder." But what they're really doing is creating a wall of noise so fatiguing that people are tired of even the catchiest songs almost immediately.

The abject stupidity of this crime against art, musicians, music, and music fans in general just boggles the mind. And there's no benefit. NONE.

[KMAN @ Dec 3rd 2008 2:45PM]

What about the 60GB PS3? That is a SACD, DVD-A, and a BRD player...

[Josh @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:44PM]

the 60GB PS3 only plays DVD-A content from DVD video:
DVD

The Digital Versatile Disc drive is an 8x speed, region coded type allowing the use of:

* PlayStation 2 DVD-ROM[28] (PlayStation region matched, i.e. NTSC-J, NTSC-U/C, PAL or NTSC-C, compatibility removed in 40GB model, the second 80GB model (CECHF), and the recently released 160GB model)
* DVD-ROM[28]
* DVD-Video[28] (DVD region matched, i.e. Zone 1, Zone 2, etc., and All)
[b]* DVD-Audio[28] (DVD-Video content only)[/b]
* DVD+R[28]
* DVD+RW[28]
* DVD-R[28]
* DVD-RW[28]
* AVCHD[28]
* DSD Disc[29]
* DualDisc[30]

but you are right, it does play SACD, which I didn't know

[DonnieD @ Dec 3rd 2008 4:07PM]

You're right about the 60gb PS3 doing SA-CD, and there are a couple other models of the PS3 that do this as well (see http://www.ps3sacd.com/ of course)... but there isn't a Sony anything out there that will play DVD-A as that was their competition (the HD-DVD to Blu-Ray of the day). It's tragic that Sony, in their infinite wisdom, decided to axe the SA-CD support on newer PS3s.

[boe @ Dec 3rd 2008 2:48PM]

It is a shame they concentrated so much on the audio portion of this player and not on improving the video more over the 3800 and the load times. I love my Denon DVD player and was hoping to get a Denon BR player when they finally moved to the BR 2.0 spec but like the 3800, this seems about a year behind the technology curve. This would have been a fantastic BR player about a year ago but now it looks somewhat old and it won't be out for another 4 months!

[The WC @ Dec 3rd 2008 2:50PM]

If by "blend" you mean "shred any floppy disk you try to stuff in the player," then probably yes.

[pio!pio! @ Dec 3rd 2008 2:52PM]

good to know it can handle dvda :devil:

[brian @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:12PM]

The white resembles the xbox360 style.

[Bad Beaver @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:13PM]

Now if Denon were not such a total bunch of twats when it comes to service/standing up to product issues, I would actually applaud this. So let us just assume that this is not a Denon unit for a second — Totally Universal Player? Awesome! Especially for those folks with both a 5K source budgets but also a serious lack of both rack-space and HDMI ports on their receivers... uh... yeah right, plays everything, great!

Oh and Engadget, there's more than 8 people "still" caring about SACD. I find your lack of understanding for niche formats... disturbing.

[John Russell @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:17PM]

Universal my ass. Where's the 8-track player?

[StalematE @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:23PM]

The light around the power button makes me nervous. I'd explode if my 5000+ receiver up and RRoDed!

[RCP @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:36PM]

@KMAN: Close, but the PS3 doesn't do DVD-A. It'll play the lower-rez DTS or DD tracks on DVD-As, but not the high-rez audio. But the SACD stuff is sweet--everyone should hear "Ziggy Stardust" on SACD at least once.

[FauxMachine @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:36PM]

Shenanigans on "world's first universal BD deck"... where's the HD-DVD compatibility, UMD and MiniDisc slots?

Go ahead and crack a joke about HD-DVD so that I can remind you that this is a $6K blu-ray player because it can play SACD.

I am confused about DVD-A though. I thought DVD-A was just music burned to a DVD and is compatible with any DVD player? What would constitute the need for a specific DVD-Audio player?

I have The Doors: L.A. Woman on DVD-A (bought to test it out) and I admit, it's nice. But I think it's nice because of the surround sound... that has nothing to do with storage media. As long as you can mix, encode, store, and then de-code during playback... it wouldn't matter what kind of disc, it's still going to sound good. Or is that wrong for me to say?

Regardless... I still wonder why more artist don't experiment w/ surround mixing.

[FauxMachine @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:41PM]

Ah, that makes sense to me. I didn't see your comment when I wrote mines.

[nathan.wong @ Dec 3rd 2008 3:41PM]

SACD? My PS3 does it at a fraction of the cost.

[JDUBB @ Dec 3rd 2008 4:02PM]

I am a Denon dealer and still don't quite understand a $6000 Denon blu-ray player. The 3800's are amazing for a third of the price. All of my customers and myself would typically rather have one player dedicated for audio and a separate player dedicated for video. The people that can afford this have multiple racks of equipment so space is NOT and issue having two components. To me this seems like a pointless product to come out with when they had both products covered for less money in two separate components.

[Artie Lange @ Dec 3rd 2008 4:05PM]

SAC-D? Why not throw in a Betamax player and Laserdisc drive while you're at it.

[balls @ Dec 3rd 2008 4:28PM]

What? Are you some sort of comedian?

[Artie Lange @ Dec 3rd 2008 10:18PM]

Sorry - I forgot to mention the Mini-disc.

[Eric22 @ Dec 3rd 2008 5:16PM]

Can't do it, since Denon sold out to the loser pirates D&M there products have gone in the toilet. D&M is a bunch of old Sony guys and they have run the company into the ground, it is all about trying to be everything to everybody.....no frickin' plan in sight. Aside from that insider stuff they concentrate on the low end for mass production so i can't trust their high end (actually it's Mid Fi).

[LonnieDvD @ Dec 3rd 2008 7:23PM]

It must be nice to spend $5,000+ on a Blu-Ray player without batting an eye.

[Greg @ Dec 3rd 2008 9:15PM]

I heard Rick Waggoner had pre-ordered three of these but had to cut his order down to two! :-0

[kcmurphy88 @ Dec 3rd 2008 10:24PM]

I'd think that HD DVD is more relevant than SAC-D.

[solaris5 @ Dec 4th 2008 1:54AM]

at http://www.sa-cd.net/ they only list 5574 SA-CDs

[hello ap @ Dec 6th 2008 6:10PM]

thats unbelievable price for that denon blu-ray dvd player,its as much as a real nice car for petesakes.i would never spend $6,000 dollars on a dvd player,its insane.but i do have a brand new panansonic dvd recorder that has 1080p for highdef disc playing for blu-ray and has built in dts and dolby digital and will play hd audio thru the fiber optic.so far this dvd recorder i recently got a few days is the best one ive had yet

[Miklos @ Dec 21st 2008 6:14PM]

Actually the PS3 does *not* play SACD disks in full quality. The PS3 converts the SACD Direct Stream Digital signals into .wav wave format audio to play an SACD. No doubt that sounds pretty good, but a dedicated SACD player outputting DSD signals sounds better, sorry.

You can verify this info easily online or probably in your PS3 user's manual.

[Steven H. Taylor @ Jan 4th 2009 2:23PM]

.wav? Where did you get that idea? That's utter nonsense. .wav is a file extension for an audio file on a disc, not for an audio stream. Perhaps you mean that PS3 converts DSD to PCM when to choose to use HDMI output. That's correct, but it's (up to) 176.4 kHz 24-bit PCM, which is extremely high-resolution, virtually as good as DSD. And if you choose to use the analog output, you don't even get to deal with PCM.

You can verify this info easily at http://www.ps3sacd.com/faq.html