9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.
5-Speed Performance In The Best Ever DVD Player!
Date of Review: Sep 17, 2002
The Bottom Line: The BEST possible DVD Player One Could Invest In And Worth Every Dollar Paid!
This DVD player will set you back some $1200.00 and Denon will not honor the warranty if it isn't purchased via an authorized Denon dealership with attached documentation inside the box (beware of some online merchants) and a receipt from such an authorized store (so be careful if purchasing and check the Denon website for that warning).
Now, let's get to the good stuff! I'm not going to list all the specifications here. If you're reading this you already know about upscale Denon products and if you don't have the specifications, just go to the Denon website for complete details.
I purchased Sony's F41MS DVD player, The Toshiba 4800 DVD Player and Denon's 1600 and 3800 Dvd Players (I really wanted to see what the quality difference was between the two Denon players as well). All players were lined-up on the floor and connected to my home-theatre system, one-at-a time. Sony's F41MS doesn't have Progressive Scan but has an excellent JPEG Photo Player incorporated so I still placed it in the running.
All players were impressive. The Toshiba 4800 did the best job of picture reproduction but was slowest at loading JPEG photos. The Sony was very good at JPEG photos but sound and picture were non-impressive. Denon's 1600 was excellent in sound and picture but wasn't able to display JPEG photos. Then came the overpriced Denon 3800 and everything let loose! JPEG photos loaded in 'SECONDS'. Again, I stress 'SECONDS' to load, even at 3-4 megapixel file sizes.
Now it gets better! Using the same 'testing' DVD, (a concert 5.1 DVD), I started the musical and picture portion of my very unauthorized and non-scientific testing of the so-called 'BEST' players. Without warning came colors never seen before in yellows and reds! I could even see individual hairs in detail from the DVD artists playing the concert hall and concert-goers in the last rows were detailed images. Sound jumped all over the six speakers and it was always clean and very detailed.
This player even played my DVD's from Europe and Asia (not all but most). It plays DVD-Audio and also HDCD and of course all CD's from anywhere; worldwide and it plays CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-R and DVD-RW (if you make your own DVD's). It also has a dedicated PAL and NTSC switch.
The quality is superior. Sound is excellent and the picture quality is stunning! JPEG photos are loaded high-speed with brilliant detail. What a wonderful way to display family photo albums on a bigscreen TV with this player and not sacrifice picture or sound quality in overall construction of this unit. It's been built to handle each quality function (its weight is a massive 10.0 kg). You can even program the player for slide shows, time limits, speed, rotation, file size and various quality modes.
At twice the price, I'd buy it again!
I returned all the other 'test decks' and kept my Denon 3800 and cherish the purchase as a piece of my home system that was/is as important as the screen, receiver, speakers and actually has become the most important component I own within the system...
