Good picture when DVD is working.

Multiple tracking and disk read problems on DVD's, DVD-Audio, and SACD.

After enjoying (and still using a DCM-370 CD player) I bought the high end 2900 DVD Player. It has been a two year struggle with various software updates and at one time replacement of an entire transport (under warranty) with limited success. Will play most redbook CD's. Plays DVD's depending on it's mood...will play several then a new one will be put in and it will not play it. After a two year adventure I give up and the 2900 is being thrown out. I am going back to Pioneer Elite or go to Ayre.

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer Elite DVD Player, Toshiba DVD players, Music Hall and Rotel CD Players.

Built like a tank for under a grand. Heavier than it's new generation version. Excellent SACD playback and video performance.

Nothing I can think of at this time.

Not much to say about this unit. I have had absolutely no problem with this player from the get go. I take good care of my equipment, i.e. cleaning, demagnetizing, ect. and the result is dependable and excellent performance no matter if movies, redbook cd's or SACD's. I have the player sitting on some vibrapods with some homebrew resonance absorption material on top. Huge difference with my hard wood floors. The progressive scan with my DLP monitor is just mind blowing. I was thinking of upgrading to an HDMI player, but I'm really attached to this player. I know it went down in price after the 2910 series came out, but oh well. IMHO this is the price you pay with technology.

Similar Products Used:

Rotel and Pioneer DVD players.

Best looking in the wold

Action movie sound

What is the Quality and assurance engineers in Denon do every day Can't imagine a product like this come out to the market In the first 4 months It get very hot and still hot at the monment and even hotter than the power amplifier nearby It catastrofic vibrates with some DVD disks and Made in China is a problem Picture and movie action sound is worse than my DVD toshiba 100 USD I not explore its music sound but it is enough to say this my last Denon pruduct I buy in my lifetime

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Some cheap DVD players

SACD sound quality is fantastic DVD picture quality and sound quailty is fantastic DVD-A sound quality is fantastic Having an all-in-one player for the amount of money is unbelievable

Playing DVD-A disks in stereo is a pain (unit defaults to multi-channel) Some vibrations on older CDs, no vibrations on SACD or DVD-A

I purchased the Denon 2900 to replace my 7 year old Aragon D2A DAC and G&D Transforms modified transport. The sound quality was most important to me with video being a distant second choice. I liked the idea of having one unit that did it all. The CD quality of the Denon 2900 was comparable to the separates but not really any better. It sounds good but nothing to get overly excited about. The quality of the SACD and DVD-A over my Magneplaner II speakers is nothing short of amazing. I like the convenience of the SACD (with the SACD I don't have to continually reset it to STEREO while each DVD-A disk I use, I have to reset it to Stereo by turning on the TV and using the on screen menus. A real hassle). The SACD is so natural and lifelike. It is a huge step up from CDs. I am buying nothing by new SACDs and avoiding the SACDs that are just remixes of older tape or older digital recordings. I am primarily classical and jazz oriented with some interest in the acoustic rock artists such as Rickie Lee Jones. Next, I put on a DVD on a new high definition ready TV. Even though DVD is not high def, I was blown away by the quality of the picture. It was nothing short of breathtaking. I really didn't believe that there was much difference between the video sections of DVD players, but I was wrong. The Denon had the sharpest and most 3 dimensional picture I have ever seen. In conclusion, I have never been so impressed with I product before other than my Magneplaners which are now going on 30 years old (with a rebuild about 8 years ago). For the price I paid or even the list price, it is well worth it.

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Sony DVD player

Built like a Main Battle Tank on Steroids, Has a huge detailed sound, Exceptional image quality, Can be set up exactly as you require with many user adjustable parameters, It is beautifully finished to close tolerances

It must have some weaknesses but I'm damned if I can find them as yet, price quoted is in UK pounds Sterling

Last Year I was looking to purchase a new DVD player with universal play capability, There was an excellent review in one of the UK mainstream audio magazines which acknowledged the Denon's class and poise but gave top spot to the Pioneer DVD 565A stating that you would get 90% of the Denon's performance for 25% of the cost. I bought this line of reasoning mainly due to the fact that money was tight. I have now been using the Denon for about 6 weeks and I am sure that the reviewer was either drunk or deaf, the Pioneer is a good little player for what it cost but it should never be mentioned in the same breath as the Denon. The DV 2900 is an Aston Martin compared to the Pioneer's Ford Probe. Having read some of the other reviews which cast doubt on the Denon's ability I am left wondering if we are reviewing the same piece of kit. I would agree with the one criticism regarding the machine's Red Book reproduction, it is never going to play CDs like my Arcam CD23T but that was a no brainer. In all other respects this is an exceptional player of DVD V, DVD A and SACDs, since the day I installed it in my rack it has continued to improve to the point where I played Jean Michele Jarre's new CD/DVD AERO, I first played the red book disc in the Arcam then the 5.1 DTS track from the DVD, The quality from the CD was as I expected, superb in scale, ambience and dynamics when processed in Dolby Pro Logic IIx by my Yamaha RX-V2400RDS, surprisingly the Denon gave nothing away to the Arcam in any department, it actually sounded better due to the discreet nature of it's DTS 5.1 surround encoding, this must be the way forward for recording, try this DVD for yourself. The video reproduction is startling, I have it connected via the component output with interlaced signals as my disply is not capable of accepting Progressive Scan output, The images cast are clear and free from artifacts with high colour saturation, I can only dream about what it is like with prog scan output but it must be special. It is worth investing in good interconnects for this machine, after two weeks I upgraded both the digital and analog cables and there was an immediate improvement on what was an already very impressive sound

Similar Products Used:

Pioneer DV526, Toshiba SD 320 Pioneer DV 565A

Price Built quality Remote control, use Image Sound/ price ratio

Black is NOT beautiful! Neither expensive nor cheap looking; just avarage Sound is avarage on CD, quite good on SACD, but that's all

I bought this player to replace a cheap Sony DVD/SACD player which I paid a couple of hundred bucks, and this one replaced a broken SCD777 ES. I don't use is at DVD player at all, and have only one DVD Audio but it's not a 192/24 disk. I still listen to red book CD,s and, that's the purpose of this player, SACD. After a few weeks of satisfying use, but not oustanding, I replaced the output OpAmps by AD825 types, removed the Video circuit and damped many parts with bitume pads. The noisy (but not unbereable) noise from the drive almost disappeard. All circuits are treated with C37 lacqueer, and a pair of HQ (Cardas) RCA's sockets installed, wired with Neotech Silverwire. I use the player only as stereo. The sound changed pretty, and I started to like it. Top open, transparent yet smooth, it outperformed many other players I heard, until... I got this Copland player borrowed. A shock! The Copland has, what 95% players are missing, the something special emotion, and a warm and present low midrange which gives the music the life back. Back to the Denon, I miss it again. OK, SACD still is still more natural in mid-high, and sound stage more diconnected from the speakers; voices totally "stand alone" and becomimg human, but there's still something missing. I'm keeping the Copland, I'm listening to more CD's (because I've a few hundreds against 2 dozen SACD), sometimes a SACD find it's way to the Denon but then back to the Copland. There's no doubt: I'd have to pay for a Krell or a Teac to get optimum SACD playback. I watched a few movies at the beginning, when my old Pioneer DVD player refused to play some disk's (especially copied), and image is outstanding. Some people say it's slow by reading the disk's content, but they never used a SCD-777 ES or SCD-1... Built quality is OK, I never had trouble so far, and maybe I'll mod it further to get some more out.

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVD/ SACD player in the $250 range: forget it Sony SCD-777 ES

Build Looks Picture quality

Extreme Vibration Audio Performance Noisy Drive Slow read times Fussy SACD/DVD-A/Redbook switching

I have had the 2900 for over a year now and thought I would put in my "2 cents worth". Let me start off by saying that I bought the 2900 to replace a 2800mkII that had given me no end of trouble with bad disk reads and general unreliability issues. Whilst the 2900 has addressed many of the problems this unit had (simply because Denon used a downgraded 3800) the 2900 has problems all of its own. The first problem seems to be with extreme vibration of the unit. Any disk that has even a slight inbalance seems to send this unit into apoplexy. I have the unit seated on an isolation style rack, and yet the vibration can be clearly felt on other components on separate shelves. I have treid the problemsome discs in other players and they play them fine, withoout any major vibration. This problem is due apparently to the 2900 having a fairly low mass spindle. Transport noise is generally high on all media, but especially so with DVD videos. The DVD-A and SACD abilities are nice, but nothing to write home about. My other redbook player seems to outperform the 2900 even when the 2900 is playing a high-rez format version of the same recording. Picture quality in movies is excellent, with rich vivid colours, but to be honest I wish that I had bought a cheaper machine now that could probably have done just as good a job for half the price. My main reason for buying the 2900 was for its high-rez audio abilities, but I must say it has been a bitter disappoinment. In summary, I thought I would give Denon one more try after the 2800mkII debacle, but never again. The 2900 is good eye candy, but as the saying goes, it is a "jack of all trades, and master of none".

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Denon 2800mkII Cambridge Audio Azur

This is the first universal player to arrived in the Phippines which is a third world country. Not much choice.

The pogressive scan loading was so slow that it seems like it would take years before it start playing. Now thats exagerration.

I bought a Denon DVD 2900 for about two weeks. I placed it on the 2nd shelves of a 3-shelves Lovan Matrix Hi-fi rack. When I played the CD of Lionel Barts'Oliver! I do noticed that the unit vibrate, I thought that the reason could be that the CD was already an old one. But straw that broke the camel back was when I insert the DVD disc of Music for Montserrat. It was during part when Mark Knopfler singing Brothers in Arms when I heard the the CDs in the CD stand I placed on top of the Hi-fi rack was shaking. I was fully aware of the review here that his unit shaking the whole house, before I bought mine. I just thought it won't happen to me. Although I do believed that his review was a little bit exagerrated, mine do shake the whole Hi-fi stand. I found it amusing that a player so expensive and so heavy would vibrate like that against an old Pioneer DV-533K so cheap and so light and played so smoothly. Anyway the store owner who is very accomodating, promised to changed it to Denon DVD-A11, when I agreed to pay for the differences. Wish me luck, or this would be the last unit Denon product I will buy in my lifetime.

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Arcam DivaCD73, Pionner player DV-533K

Very Good Video Seamless layer change

Mid-line CD performance

I have owned the player for about a year now having received one of the first units available. It was purchased to replace a Pioneer DV-09 mostly to get the benefit of progressive scan. As has been stated before, build quality is very good and all controls have a quality feel. It has never skipped a beat and has a seamless layer transfer - I have yet to notice it. The picture overall is very good but isn't as smooth as I would like. Color, detail, and shadows are rendered with excellent results but it appears at times that the on screen images have an almost "mosaic" look, something my backup $79 Panasonic player does not do. In fact it has a smooth more "film-like" image than the Denon. Audio performance is quite good in SACD and DVD audio. On redbook CD's it leaves a lot to be desired but this isn't the primary use of this machine. I actually prefer to use the digital out and let my Pre/processor handle all d/a conversions. In fact, the Bryston processing sounds just as good to me on redbook CD's as the 2900's DAC's on SACD and DVD-A. Having also purchased a 2200 for the living room, I would recommend it over the 2900 if you will be using the digital out exclusively or if you will be using it primarily for movies and redbook CD's - it does sound better than the 2900 with almost no picture difference. If you like the weight and looks of the 2900 by all means buy it - you could have just saved enough to purchase more movies and music. With the digital end of things changing so rapidly, I have been reluctant to invest much since I seem to turn it over every 18 months. I am still waiting for HD DVD but the industry seems to still be trying to come up with a standard connectivity format. DVI is already obsolete! Overall a very good player for the price and should last longer than the format.

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Denon 2200 Pioneer DV-09 Theta David Cal Audio 2500 Panasonic RP-82

great DVD picture, pretty good CD, SACD and DVD-A playback

long load time on disc and poor vcd pictures.

I have purchased the B-stock unit for approx 1 year. The CD sound is pretty good, but not as good as my old modified ARD DIO DAC. SACD and DVD-A is pretty good, IMHO. The picture is one of the main strength of this player. The DVD picture just look stunning on my 46” Sony HDTV. One the other hand, VCD playback is somewhat poor. I don’t know why but VCD looks horrible. I had to write this review because one reviewer mentioned about noise on this player. One thing I have noticed that the player does have some noise on the “Elton Johns Good by yellow brick road”, but I did not notice this until the one of the reviewer (look a few down) mentioned in his review. Frankly, with volume turned all the way down, the noise was very low and I had to be very close to the Denon to notice the noise. Also, the noise went away after Track 1. I don’t know why the previous review said “. I put my hand on top the unit and much to my surprise it was the denon – shaking down the house! I could not believe it – this thing was really shaking” To me, that seem impossible that a DVD player was shaking down his house. To some audiophiles, any little noise will drive them crazy.

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sony500, sony 900