Everything except the remote

Remote

I must have got the only 4800 that doesn't have any issues. No blinking, its certainly worked when I plugged it in. In fact, I bought the first 4800 at any Tweeter store in Mass. Sure the remote is substandard, the tray rattles a bit, it does take 20 seconds to load a disk and Denon customer service is poor. But its a $1,200 DVD, CD, HDCD, and DVD-A player. The sound is far better than anything else they sell at Tweeter. I had the 9000ES and the picture was not nearly as good, CD sound couldn't carry the Denon's jock. Also tried the Toshiba 9200. Sound is far better.

Sure, it weighs less than the 2800 or the 9000ES, but a corvette weighs less than a Grand Prix. It's what's under the hood people. I love people who complain about these little inconsequential details and miss the main points. How does it sound and How is the picture. If you want a 55 pound DVD player then spend $5000 on a Classe or Mark Levinson. Did you ever see a remote control for a high end manufacturer. Its like the first TV remote controls with 4 maybe 5 buttons.

The assumption is that most people test these things before they buy them. Could you not hear a disk being loaded, see the time it took to load, grab the remote control. This is stuff you notice before you buy it. Firmware and QC issues aside, people who give any piece of equipment 2 stars because of the way the tray loads, or how slow the load time is are either the dumbest consumers in the world for not taking the time to research and test the equipment first or simply don't understand the point of high end products. Its about the audio video performance, not whether the disk tray closes fast enough or that the remote is useless.

Highend equipment does not necessarily mean that you get better remote controls, heavier players, better tray. Its about the A/V experience. Lexicon is the most boring thing in the world to look at and the remote is barely useable, but he sound is second to none.

I'm not saying people don't have a right to state their opinions, because thats exactly what this site is for. What I'm saying is that when you read a review take into account the things people are complaining about. If your a smart consumer you should do your homework before you buy a $1200 DVD player to see if these little things are that important to your buying decision. To give a product 2 stars because of a "cheap tray" or bad remote" It tells me you didn't do your homework because if these things are that significant and hold that much weight you wouldn't have bought it.

Finally, all new products have issues, The 9000ES had a chroma bug, B&K AVR 202 etc.

I'm using the Denon with:
B&K 307 - Receiver
Vienna Acoustics - Mozart - Front
Vienna Acoustic - Meastro - Center
Vienna Acoustics - Waltz - Surrounds
Rel - Strata - Sub

I have absolutly nothing to complain about with this setup.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 9000ES

I just wanted to add an update to my earlier review. After several weeks, Denon actually called me back and said they now have a fix for the blinking video problem. Apparently there is a bug in one of the chips on the Panasonic drive in the 4800. They had a limited number of chips on hand and they wanted me to ship the player to CA for repair. New players would have the corrected ship sometime in December depending on manufacturing run.

I have to give them a lot of credit for actually caring and correcting the problem so quickly. The problem should never have made it out the door, but at least they have a service department that can react to customer complaints.

Picture Quality. Sound Quality. Build.

None.

This player is incredible for the quality and breadth of features it offers at the price. The amaing thing is, they have been able to combine a top flight CD player, with a top flight DVD-Video Player, with a DVD-Audio Player and kept the price reasonable without sacrificing quality. I also have the Denon DCM460, which is their best 5 disc CD Changer. And the DVM-4800 outperforms it for CD performance. It has tremendous dynamic range. It is revealing of the original recording quality, but without making anything sound too harsh.
Video-wise, I have only seen one player better. And that's the Proceed DVD-Player. However, since this is $6300 less expensive, this is truly quite impressive. Hooked up to a 65" Mitsubishi Diamond Series TV, the video has an almost flawlessly film-like presentation. Incredible. Compared with the Denon DVD2800, which is still a solid player, this is a huge step up. As well for the Marantz DV7100 and the Toshiba SD6200.
If you are looking to consolidate a bit, and want the latest, without sacrificing quality, this is a sure bet.

Similar Products Used:

Denon DVD2800, Marantz DV7100, Toshiba SD6200

DVD Audio, 5 Disc, HDCD, Progressive Scan, Al 24 Processing.

none that i see or hear.

Compared to a playstation 2 the options and overall quality is obviously much better. I really haven't owned anything else to compare this to other than a Playstation 2 as far as DVD goes. But i can say that i am very pleased about everything this player has to offer especially the dvd audio and progressive scan. the dvd audio format is quite new to my interest's but i am impressed w/ the overall sound quality of the dvd audio format. I am running this player through my Denon avr 4802 reciever and the two components match quite well. Using the ext. in input on the 4802 i am able to take full advantage of the dvd audio section of the player. Just wish there were more titles available in the dvd audio world!! soon i guess. As far as the progressive scan goes, again, this is my first experience w/ a prog. scan player, it seems to be flawless to my eyes. Very impressed w/ the overall picture quality of the player. My tv is a Sony 32" XBR450 hi-scan wega. The two components are very impressive together. I would reccomend this player to anyone in the market for a Dvd player that has both dvd audio and progressive scan otherwise it makes a great overall player with 5 disc capability.

Similar Products Used:

Playstation 2

Display of enhanced widscreen software is amazing. I owned the 2800 for a couple of weeks and the 4800 is hands down a huge step forward.

Put a 4:3 DVD in the player and watch in "auto", "zoom" or "shrink" mode and the player blinks every so often. Calls to Denon have not produced a solution. I took back the first unit and the replacement does the same thing.

Assuming Denon can solve the "blinking" problem, this is an amazing unit.

Similar Products Used:

DVD - 2800

Plethora of technical specifications

remote, UI, CD player, manual, player firmware

Plethora of technical specifications

This is a follow up to a previous post w/a few corrections
and better formatting (I hope).

This is my 3rd and last Denon purchase. The first being a
single-disc Denon DCD-1520 CD player some ten years ago that still works great. The second being the AVR-3802 which is a
user-interface nightmare, and now for the third
disappointment, the DVM-4800.

First up to bat is the CD-Player portion of the unit. Of
the twenty store bought, scratch-free, clean CD's I tried,
only 2 were actually read by my 4800. These same unreadable
CD's were playable on my cheapy PC CD-player, my el-cheapo
boom-box CD-player, my generic Ford car-stereo CD player....
you get the point. The 4800 makes two quick attempts to
read the disc, then gives up and moves on to the other disc
trays to determine what's in them. Upon finding no other
CDs it indicates something like "no discs" on the display
and stops. This is totally lame! When it can read a CD, it
indicates this and spends several seconds doing some initial
reading. Why it takes so long to read is beyond me. Most
Cd players are ready to start playing a CD the instant you
put one in. Not the 4800. After waiting several seconds
the CD tracks are finally displayed on the unit and you can
press the play button. Much to my surprise, ALL my home
burned CD's as well as MP3 single session CD's played
without a snag. It won't read past the first session if you
put in a multi-session MP3 CD. I was disappointed that it
didn't display the artist or song name for MP3s.
Furthermore, I would have expected a good use of the TV GUI
stuff would have been to display the ID3 tag info of the MP3
or atleast a directory listing of the MP3 titles on disc.
But of course they don't. I guess this is a better done
with free software like WinAmp, not professional audio equip
from Denon.

Upon playing a CD, you'll see the default count up 'time'
indicator on the display. I prefer a more useful count down
'time' indicator, but this can only be changed through the
TV GUI interface not the unit's front panel or remote. Upon
figuring out the miniature TV GUI Icons and/or cryptic
letters, you can switch to a count down time. Upon choosing
it, a huge '-' minus sign is put on the unit's display. For
some reason a '+' huge plus sign isn't put on the display
when the time is incrementing, so why clutter the display
with an ugly minus sign when decrementing. Isn't it obvious
the time is decrementing?

Next I tried the "Random Play" feature. It's a slow noisy
process where the player firmware initially spins the not so
quiet cheap plastic carousel round and round doing who knows
what for about 10-20 seconds. Sometimes the carousel would
stop spinning making you think it finally located the disc
it wanted, only to start back up again...argg.. After
finalizing on a disc, it would switch to randomizing the
track on the CD. Even this takes time. Once the track is
selected it is played. After the track is played, I
expected the unit to go through the entire randomization
process again, but it didn't. Much to my disappointment,
the unit stays on the same CD until all the tracks are
played in a random order. Afterwards, it goes through the
lengthy noisy randomization process to locate the next CD to
play. During several experiments with this 'feature', I
discovered that sometimes when switching to a new CD it
wouldn't play it. It would sit there waiting for the user
to hit play. Bug? Why oh why didn't they come up with a
firmware algorithm which locates the next random sequence
prior to needing it and then rotate the carousel into
position?? Another quirk of randomization is that you have
to stop the player to enable/disable the feature. This
wouldn't be so bad if the player was faster and more
reliable in reading CD's. Also in "Random Play" mode the
'time' indicator can only be set to incrementing time or
time remaining per track. Note that "Random Play" isn't
available for MP3 cds for some reason. I would have
expected this feature on an MP3 player since it is possible
to have some 30+ hours of music.

Let's talk about the TV GUIs. Unlike the AVR-3802, this
unit CAN display it's GUI stuff through the component video
outputs. Whew!! The GUI's are activated by pressing the
'Display' button on the remote. Depending on what kind of
media is playing, different GUI's will appear on your TV
display. To sum it up, the icons are too small, the
labeling is cryptic, and most of the GUI items could have
been put on the remote or the unit's front panel with the
exception of the initial setup selections. FYI, the initial
setup GUI's are nicely done. So why did they bother putting
up/down positioning arrows on each dialog but not
left/right? Given the screen area available on the TV, this
interface could have been done much better.

I've only played 4 DVD's so far and haven't had enough time
to really test the DVD compatibility/readablity portion of
the player. I was able to confirm/witness the blinking
problem which previous posters alerted of. After talking to
Denon tech support they acknowledged the problem and
indicated I should return the unit to the internet dealer I
purchased it from. If I sent it to them, they would only
fix the unit once since I didn't buy it from an authorized
dealer. Needless to say, they weren't very helpful.

The remote has a pretty short range and is pretty weak. The
buttons I use most frequently like play, stop, skip, and
seek, are small buttons located in the middle of the remote,
while the GUI arrows buttons which I try to avoid are rather
large buttons eating up valuable real-estate towards the
upper half of the remote.

The instruction manual is typical of Denon, it sucks. The
user must be an audio gearhead to understand it. Answers to real questions are few and far between.

Wow, they must have been hurrying to get this puppy out the
door because the firmware for the unit is sad. I call this
the "Can we ship it syndrome?"

For the 1K price tag this unit is NOT a worthy buy. I don't
know what's up with the my 4800 and store bought CDs and
neither did Denon tech support. Tech support indicated that
most of their complaints have been with home-made CD-Rs.
Perhaps the single laser pickup got out of alignment during
shipment?

Audio, options, ease of setup, display, picture quality.

Agonizingly slow read of discs, no true random play, a bit noisy on the exchange, dvd audio/video playback sequence.

First, I've had no problems with the blink, the picture quality is very good, the audio is superb, the 5.1 channel surround for DVD audio is uplifting and the remote is not all bad.

Second and long, however, are my disappointments with the features I needed most. Random play on this unit is a joke! The first day out (I've had the 4800 for almost three months) I was faxing the dealer and emailing Denon with questions about the absence of random play as I have come to know it on CD players. The 4800 does play random but, as mentioned on other reviews here, it plays only on one disc at a time. I spent hours trying to figure out why I couldn't get this unit to skip around from disc to disc for random selections. A more careful reading (between the lines, of course,) on my part of the manual, I expect, would have told me there is no such random animal to pet on the 4800. I received a response from a tech at Denon explaining that the downtime between discs was considered too great, eliminating the inclusion of all disc random play.

The more irritating feature of the audio play on the 4800 is the playback sequencing of dvd audio/video. Each of these formats offers video options. The viewing options involve choices of scenery, musical notes or composer bios, for example. These selections are identified on the 4800 as "groups." Good, so far. Problem is, when all the tracks have been played the disc does not move onto play the following disc. If it played the tracks with group 3 on display, for example, you the listener are now ready to hear the same tracks played again with group 4 being displayed. It doesn't make any difference whether the video is on-screen. DVD audio and/or video will continue to play on the 4800 in a repeat mode (even though repeat is not selected)unless the user selects the following disc. For cd audio, however, the discs will change normally. The best bet for play is to either load up the tray with all audio cd or all DVD auio/video. Or better yet, get a single disc dvd audio/video player and stick with your reliable random play cd player. The 4800 typing itself as a five disc player is a misnomer; it's a five disc player with a governor.

The bass enhancement feature is not for those who use a sub. Use it with a sub and the music will be all-sub.

One can also enable 'audio only' for DVD audio/video to enhance the audio. I don't hear a difference though. Enabling audio only doesn't help with the aforementioned repeat play of audio/video dvd.

Don't look to see who may be banging around in the kitchen while the 4800 is reading the discs. It's the 4800 going about its business with all the grace of a Sherman tank. Slow on the read and exchange? Oh yes. But what's the hurryup! Once it gets moving in the direction of song you will enjoy the listen, quite so! Just be patient and ignore the fact that this machine has many forward gears stuck in neutral.

I'll give it a 3 star for satisfaction. The 4800 is over-priced given the litany of negatives on this site. You can have questions answered by a Denon tech by emailing tech@pyramid-audio.com. You might be asked to provide a serial number of the product and date of purchase though. The techs then bill Denon for the couple of minutes they spend responding to our complaints.

My system:

Denon AVR4800
Denon 4800DVM
B&W Nautilus 805 (4 fronts)
Onkyo TX-DS939
B&W 303 for surrounds
Boston Acoustic VRS for rears
Onkyo Integra CD player

Similar Products Used:

Denon 2800

Picture Quality

Blinks when set to Zoom, Shrk., or Auto.

I'm trying to call Denon to see if they can help me with the black blinking problem. I thought it was just the system, until I read the other reviews. I took the first one back on Sat. and the new one still has the blinking problem.

Every format usable except SACD. Carousel

No random play on cds

I researched this product up and down. The greatest concern I had from one of the reviews was if the unit would random play all cds in the tray. All sales people I talked to said it would. I went as far as trying units in store to see if it would. Never convinced, I finally had two sales people guarantee me it would. I took the unit home and imjmediately tried without success. I called denon the next day and they confirmed for me that this unit does not play random on all discs. The employees I talked to were even perplexed that the unit was not programmed for this feature. I have a Denon cd carousel that I enjoy for the random feature. I was hoping to reduce a component in my rack while at the same time getting a good progressive scan dvd player. One question I have though, why would anyone want to just random play on a single cd?

I did get a chance to briefly look at video on a new hdtv. Although Bugs Life captivated my 2 year old I could still see some flaws in the detail. However the product did not get enough video play once I found out about the missing random feature.

I have decided that I will acquire a Sony prog. scan DVD and wait for Denon to correct this problem.

Picture, sound and Picture adjustments

Build quality, Video "Blink"

First, I must say that I need to find an audio/video store that doesn’t make it so easy to upgrade. I upgraded from the Denon DVM-2800, which was a superb piece for progressive 3:2 video and digital surround sound. I was intrigued by an outstanding review of the DVM-4800 in an Audiophile magazine and decided to upgrade for the convenience of a changer and the promise of DVD audio.
After unpacking the player I immediately noticed that it simply did not seem to have the same heft and quality workmanship as the 2800. I plugged it into my system using an optical digital output for Dolby/DTS, R/L analog audio outputs for CD and the analog 6 channel output for DVD audio. I fired up everything, popped “Star Wars – Episode I” into the player and started to experiment. After running through a fairly detailed setup menu I started the disk. My monitor is a Sony High Definition 53” TV. Needless to say the progressive video was excellent. I particularly liked the adjustments, which set TV type to projection and the picture mode to cinema. The sound was equally good, running through my 6.1 Onkyo THX receiver. DVD Audio was astonishing – to say the least. I tried the 5.1 mix of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors, unbelievable. I felt like I was in the recording studio listening to the band lay down the tracks. Sound and progressive picture combined, this is truly one of the elite players on the market.
Now the bad news, and why this player has been returned. The build quality continued to bother me. The disk tray was noisy and closed and opened unevenly. Does this effect performance, probably not, but still unacceptable for $1,200! Next, as with others on this page I get the blinking video feature with any non-anamorphic DVD transfers. Denon should have caught this problem before any of these players shipped. So I returned it, my audio outlet didn’t have a newer replacement so I will continue my quest for DVD excellence with another manufacturer.

Similar Products Used:

Sony DVP-S330, Pioneer Elite DV-C36 (Never should have traded "up" from that one!)