Denon DVD-1940

Author's product rating:   

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

Advantages:	Fantastic picture quality, fantastic audio quality, great value
Disadvantages:	not exactly cheap, a bit chunky looking

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I've just bought one of these. Oooh it's good. Really good.

Here's why.

It's a dead cool DVD player which is ideal if you have an HD ready telly and want to really enjoy your DVDs to the full. It has Dolby sound so is great if you hook it up to separate speakers, but pretty good if you don't, too.

It comes in silver (well aluminium) or black, and compared to some DVD players it is quite chunky - about the thickness of a video recorder. I don't know why. I forgive it this though, as the picture quality is awesome. Really sharp.

It has 1080 upscaling, which means it is fully HD compatible, and a detachable mains lead, which I couldn't see the point of until More Technically Minded Hubby (MTMH) explained that this is a Good Thing as it allows you to upgrade the cable and get even better quality.

Until buying this, I thought it was only worth paying thirty quid for a DVD player, but now I understand that you get what you pay for and this is worth paying for. MTMH paid £180 for ours, which is a lot more than thirty quid but oooh I am happy.

It is easy to use, and gives you ultra sharp picture quality and great sound. It won What Hifi's 2007 best DVD player under £300 award, which is what made him consider it. They clearly know a thing or two at What Hifi.

Right, now take a deep breath:

It has:

* HDMI Interface with Multi Channel Audio(480p/720p/1080i/1080p Scaling). Um, I think this means the picture quality is fab. It might be what makes the sound quality fab though. Not entirely sure.

*it played CDs as well as DVDs, and plays -R and -RW DVDs

* it has 24-bit, 192-kHz High Resolution Audio D/A Converters and 12 bit, 216 MHz High Resolution Video D/A Converters. Sorry but I have no idea at all what they are, but it does says that on the box.

* it has Progressive Scan featuring DCDi by Faroudja. This is apparently cool (according to MTMH) and I can confirm that what it does is sort of upgrade iffy quality DVDs and make them appear sharper and not so grainy.

* it also has HDMI/Component (Interlace) Parallel video outputs. No clue what they are either. Sorry.

* 2 MB Buffer Memory. This means it doesn't judder or momentarily pause while the disk has a wee think to itself ever.

You can adjust the picture to get the best for your configuration and individual disk, and it has DivX Ultra.

It's really good for viewing photos from too.

The standby mode is a new eco style one which only uses 1W on standby: half as much electricity as previous models apparently.

One thing that is really cool is that if you pause the DVD and then it stops (you know how if they are on pause for too long they close down), when you restart you have the option of restarting from where you last paused, so you don't have to try and find the right bit all over again. That's great.

I am so happy with this machine, I really wish we'd bought one earlier. Well worth it, if you have an HD TV. If you don't have a CD player, I think you could just have one of these wired up to speakers and do without a separate CD player - the quality is better than my CD player actually.

You'll love this product.