Denon DVD 2800

...=== Looks and Set-Up ===The Denon 2800 MKII is an impressive unit that seems solidly constructed and comes in either a black or gold champagne casing that features a 15mm-thick aluminium extruded front panel. There is none of the cheap looking plastic casing that you get with a lot of the cheaper DVD players on the market nowadays. Instead what you have is a quality looking high grade piece of technology. Perhaps a bit on the bulky side but for me ...
...machine to your TV. The Denon is supplied with a sleek well designed remote control that for the most part is ergonomically friendly with buttons clearly differentiated by shape and colour.


=== Image Quality === This player makes use of a Silicon Image DVDO PureProgressiveTM SiI504 Decoding Engine. You have the option to adjust tint, brightness, contrast, sharpness and gamma as well as switching between two black levels, but ... more

If you splash out on a quality TV then you need a quality DVD player. Having recently purchased a large LCD TV I knew that I could no longer rely on that cheap bit of technological tat that I bought from Tesco last year. If nothing else it just looked embarrassing under my 37 inch LCD screen.

Looks and Set-Up

The Denon 2800 MKII is an impressive unit that seems solidly constructed and comes in either a black or gold champagne casing that features a 15mm-thick aluminium extruded front panel. There is none of the cheap looking plastic casing that you get with a lot of the cheaper DVD players on the market nowadays. Instead what you have is a quality looking high grade piece of technology. Perhaps a bit on the bulky side but for me that is not a negative factor. Setting up the player is fairly straight forward, the leads are supplied in order to connect the machine to your TV. The Denon is supplied with a sleek well designed remote control that for the most part is ergonomically friendly with buttons clearly differentiated by shape and colour.

Image Quality

This player makes use of a Silicon Image DVDO PureProgressiveTM SiI504 Decoding Engine. You have the option to adjust tint, brightness, contrast, sharpness and gamma as well as switching between two black levels, but if you make a mes of things you can always switch back to the default. I'm really not sure about all the jargon but I can say that the resulting images are stunning. I have viewed a number of DVDs on this player so far and there is definitely a noticeable improvement in the image quality when compared with my previous DVD player which was a cheap one purchased from Tesco. In fact I would say the improvement is vast with what seem like almost flawless images. Black levels are more crisply defined during night time sequences for example and there is a finer gradient of shading in sunlit shadows. There is a richer colour saturation with the saturation having more range and therefore probably more accuracy in colour reproduction. With my previous DVD player primary colours appeared much paler. With this player such colours are intense and there are noticeable subtle variations in skin tones. It brings out the rich warm tones of Kylie's cheeks. You notice things that you haven't seen on previous viewings of the same film or video: the graphic textures of vegetation; the deep shadows of night scenes; the vibrant plumage of a tropical birds. If I were to be picky I would mention the slight motion blur of objects during panning shots - the kick of a ball, a passing bird in flight, Kate Winslet's locks blowing in the breeze - but such anomalies can be reduced by using the progressive scan feature.

Audio Quality

This Denon is also passes for as an impressive compact disc player and performs well when combined with my home cinema/hi-fi system. A sharp stereo sound is evident that possesses both a coherent sense of depth and plenty of warm solid bass.

Features

The look is complimented by the smooth operation and quiet low-resonance of the DVD loader. The player can spin discs at up to 4x play speed for CDs and 2x for DVDs. You can also upgrade the system (by inserting CD-ROM discs) in order to adjust to any newly introduced DVD standards. CD-R and CD-RW discs can be used in this player, and it has a MP3 decoder making it compatible with MP3 music files. There is also an HDCD digital filter, which means that the player is able to decode the various HDCD-compliant audio discs.

Other Features

Connections: Video: composite, S-Video (Y/C) and Scart (with RGB) out Component video/RGB switchable via 3x phonos. Audio: analogue out via phono and Scart, digital optical and electrical S/PDIF out.

VSS (two-speaker Virtual Surround Sound);Trick play: Multi-angle, multi-subtitle, still-frame, four-speed disk search, chapter search, frame-skip, three-speed slow motion, repeat title, chapter, track and disc, programme play, random play.

Conclusion

If you're accustomed to using a cheaply purchased supermarket DVD player, it will seem like you've replaced your DVD collection with a new one when you start slotting your discs into the Denon. The 2800 MKII has all the characteristics of a quality player. After six months of regular use there have been no major functional hang ups. Although priced at around £600 new, the Denon 2800 MKII gives the overall performance of DVD player that costs more than its price. I was fortunate to pick mine up second-hand for £100. I would certainly recommend the Denon DVD 2800 MKII as it simple exudes quality.
© Zmugzy January 2008 

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