Hands-on with Denon's super-separates

Posts with tag Denon


Denon has announced its first real Blu-ray player, with an appropriate assortment of never-before-seen features and price tag to match. The DVD-3800BDCI will launch this fall as the first high definition player to include Silicon Optix's 10-bit Realta HQV video processor, recently seen in Syntax-Brillian's $10k LCD and the big brother to the Toshiba HD-XA2's Reon. The first Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player we've seen, it supports separate picture-in-picture audio and video streams. Unfortunately, $1,999 isn't enough to provide an Ethernet port, so any online content will need to be downloaded on a PC and sneakernetted to the player via SD card. Finally, internal decoding for all Blu-ray surround sound formats is included, and it's the first player with an HDMI 1.3a output, providing enough bandwidth to pass sound natively to a receiver for decoding. Announced
Denon isn't exactly the first name that comes to mind when you think of headphones, so you can be forgiven for mistaking this group here for the company's first ever when they're in fact only the latest, albeit the most consumery the company has yet offered. The most affordable of the lot is the $150 AH-D1000 set, available in your choice of black or silver and designed to be equally at home hooked up to your MP3 player or home stereo, also packing Denon's trademark "microfiber diaphragm technology," which supposedly boosts sound quality and reduces distortion. Taking things up a notch, the $350 AH-D2000 cuts down on the portability but presumably ups the aural enjoyment, while the $700 AH-D5000 tops things off with a genuine mahogany covering on the cans, which Denon says will improve acoustics, not to mention fit in nicely with your collection wood-paneled electronics. Look for all three of 'em to be available later this month. Also now hitting our shores but announced in Japan a few months back are a pair of earbud models, including the $50 AH-C350, offering just about the lowest entry-point for any Denon product, and the $200 AH-C700, which should provide that little extra something for the more discerning listener.
If you can't make heads nor tails of the whole HD DVD / Blu-ray debacle but still want a taste of 1080p, Denon's new lineup delivers just that. Realizing some people are still waiting to see how the next-gen optical disc war pans out, Denon has unveiled three new 1080p upscaling DVD players that are marginally more affordable than its more luxurious options. Apparently Denon is marketing these units to easily fit into any custom installation by labeling each model "CI," although we can't really think of how else to install a DVD player. Regardless, the DVD-3930CI ($1,499), DVD-2930CI ($849), and DVD-1930CI ($369) all offer 1080p upconverting over HDMI and SACD / DVD-Audio playback. The DVD-3930CI sports the same Realta HQV chipset as in the DVD-5930CI, Denon Pixel Image Correction (DPIC), on-board keystone correction, and Burr-Brown PCM-1796 DACs. The mid-ranger features the Silicon Optix REON VX chipset and DPIC while the DVD-1930CI steps down to a Faroudja DCDi chipset and a more economical version of the Burr-Brown DACs. Not much has changed outside of the technical rundown, as all of the units feature Denon's subtle black styling and promise to deliver that "uncompromising quality" we've come to expect. If you need something to hold you off awhile longer before choosing an HD format, or maybe a good reason to see what you've been missing on DVD, Denon's two higher-end models can be grabbed now while the DVD-1930CI will be available in August.









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