Denon DVD-1930

Author's product rating:   

Picture Playback	Excellent
Sound Level	Excellent
Range of Features	Above Average
Durability	Excellent
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Good picture quality
Disadvantages:	Flimsey remote

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I've just picked up one of these as I've had a 42" Samsung HD TV for a while now and thought it was time for my old DVD player to be upgarded to HDMI to take advantage of it.

All I can say is WOW! The picture quality from this DVD player is absolutely fantastic and I'm now thinking I should have bought one a while ago. The images produced compared to my old NAD DVD player are crisp, vibrant and full of 'life'.

Hooking it up was a quick and painless affair - unplug old DVD, insert new one and put all connectors in the back, HD cable to the TV and voila, it's up and running.

The remote is a bit flimsey but in all honesty I can live with that because the image quality from the player more than makes up for it. The buttons are well spaced allowing easy pressing without hitting the one alongside. I have a Sony DVD player as well in the house and the buttons on the remote are so close together you can't use your thumb to press buttons you have to use a finger as if pointing at someone in order not to hit the one alongside.

The build quality of the unit itself is good and it's thick design I find much more appealing than similarly priced units that are very thin trying to be 'trendy'. The buttons are also large which I like, again some trendy units have tiny buttons which I find irritating.

The sound quality from the unit is also very good, much better than my £500 NAD unit (although that is five years old now). My old unit used to struggle sometimes with the vocals on movies but with the Denon the voices are very clear and unmuffled. Bass clarity is also very good and the mid's to highs are also clear. It is also very good for playing normal music CD's which is a bonus as you won't necessarily have to splash out for a separate CD player.

The Denon is also compatible with a wide variety of discs, something which cheaper units struggle with. It will play -R/RW recordable DVD and CD, MP3, WMA, JPEG files and it will also play DivX encoded discs, fantastic!

It offers a very intuative on-screen set-up menu which is easily navigated using the remote. The range of settings isn't overwhelming but it is sufficient. After all what do you expect at this price? If you want everything then you'll either end up paying for it or you'll buy a piece of kit that suffers on component quality.

The rear panel offers all the usual connectors, scart, HD, S-video, digital (optical and coaxial), audio L & R for CD's, component outputs and 5.1 audio outputs.

All in all I've found this player to be very good and would defeinitely recommend it to anyone looking for a HDMI player. I would also say though that unless you have a decent surround sound set up (£1000+) and a good HD ready TV consider something cheaper as you won't benefit from what this player can offer and you'll keep some money in your pocket.

I managed to get mine from Richer Sounds for £199.99 (in the January sales of course!!!!) which is excellent value considering it's a £250 player.