MSRP: £4,500.00
Introduction
Let's be honest and cut to the chase: any Blu-ray Disc player with a price-tag higher than three figures has got its work cut out for it. Such is the case with Denon's DVD-A1UDCI, which has been in development for some time and has been designed from the ground up as the ultimate optical disc player. In fact, the machine's development has stretched as far back as the HD DVD days, and eagle-eyed users will be able to spot a permanently unlit “HD DVD” icon on the front of its status panel. Ah - for what could have been. If all goes well, the DVD-A1UDCI should be the only machine you'll ever need to handle the playback of Blu-ray Disc, DVD Video, DVD Audio, Super Audio CD, standard CDs, and also JPEG, MP3 and DivX files from SD cards (does anyone spending this amount of cash on a quality disc player seriously watch DivX movies?) Let's see how it performs with our usual array of tests.
Styling/Build/Connectivity
Appropriately enough at this price, the machine is “built like a tank”, and for a BD player is incredibly heavy (at least as weighty as most mid-range amps). The build quality is second to no other BD player I've ever reviewed; Denon's machine feels like it could sustain many years of use (or abuse) without even creaking. The unit received for review was a sleek black with a subtle brushed effect, and although not entirely matte, Denon's machine is nowhere near as glossy as Pioneer's high-end players (that's a compliment). Denon also make this player available in an equally appealing silver finish.
As is common for high end players, the DVD-A1 stays ahead of cheaper competitors through extended connectivity options. To start with, the machine has two HDMI outputs, which can either act independently (to power two display devices simultaneously), or be configured to send separate Video and Audio portions to the to appropriate devices (for example, Video to a projector and Audio to an amplifier). This avoids the video and audio being packetised together and it's claimed this will improve the quality, but I suspect most of its proponents use the method for peace of mind (if the option is there, it's logical enough to go ahead and use it).
We also have Component Video outputs (RCA connector type). These are limited to sending 1080i video due to Hollywood copy protection paranoia. For some reason, there are also Composite and S-Video standard-def outputs.
On the audio side, we also have 7.1 channel analogue surround outputs, which will allow owners of pre-HDMI 1.3 amplifiers to enjoy high def audio. These outputs are fed by 32-bit/192khz digital to analogue converters. There's also standard definition Optical and Coaxial audio outputs, which will be limited to transmitting high bit-rate DTS audio. More uniquely, Denon's proprietary “Denon Link 4th” interface (which curiously sends audio and clock synchronization over an ethernet-like connection) makes an appearance, as do professional-style XLR audio outputs, presumably designed for those who favour analogue output for Stereo playback to select high-end amps.
Lastly, there's an Ethernet port for connecting to the internet for firmware updates and BD Live enabled discs (a feature recently added via one such firmware update over the last few weeks), two 3.5mm jacks for Denon's remote control interface, and an RS232C port for system integrators.
The remote takes a little bit of getting used to due to its shape, but it wins points by being backlit (something I really appreciate as a projector owner) and by having logically placed buttons.
As is common for high end players, the DVD-A1 stays ahead of cheaper competitors through extended connectivity options. To start with, the machine has two HDMI outputs, which can either act independently (to power two display devices simultaneously), or be configured to send separate Video and Audio portions to the to appropriate devices (for example, Video to a projector and Audio to an amplifier). This avoids the video and audio being packetised together and it's claimed this will improve the quality, but I suspect most of its proponents use the method for peace of mind (if the option is there, it's logical enough to go ahead and use it).
We also have Component Video outputs (RCA connector type). These are limited to sending 1080i video due to Hollywood copy protection paranoia. For some reason, there are also Composite and S-Video standard-def outputs.
On the audio side, we also have 7.1 channel analogue surround outputs, which will allow owners of pre-HDMI 1.3 amplifiers to enjoy high def audio. These outputs are fed by 32-bit/192khz digital to analogue converters. There's also standard definition Optical and Coaxial audio outputs, which will be limited to transmitting high bit-rate DTS audio. More uniquely, Denon's proprietary “Denon Link 4th” interface (which curiously sends audio and clock synchronization over an ethernet-like connection) makes an appearance, as do professional-style XLR audio outputs, presumably designed for those who favour analogue output for Stereo playback to select high-end amps.
Lastly, there's an Ethernet port for connecting to the internet for firmware updates and BD Live enabled discs (a feature recently added via one such firmware update over the last few weeks), two 3.5mm jacks for Denon's remote control interface, and an RS232C port for system integrators.
The remote takes a little bit of getting used to due to its shape, but it wins points by being backlit (something I really appreciate as a projector owner) and by having logically placed buttons.
1080p Disc Playback
Unlike in the days of SD DVD where we had to contend with video DACs, deinterlacing, and later, scaling, a 1080p/24 Blu-ray Disc source connected digitally to a 1080p/24 display device poses almost no room for mishaps. Subtle differences in Chroma Upsampling ability do exist, but these are just that – incredibly subtle (when was the last time you watched a BD and were upset by the quality of the Chroma Upsampling?) Assuming that the player isn't meddling with the disc contents, then what it's outputting is as true a representation of the encoded contents as is possible (the TV or Projector itself will be the main limiting factor).
The DVD-A1 doesn't meddle (unless you tell it to) and as a result, its output quality at 1080p is every bit as good as other BD players I've tested. It doesn't crop any pixels from the image, so it delivers the full 1920x1080 pixels to the display.
In the interests of comparison, it's probably worthwhile to compare the Denon DVD-A1 to one interesting high-end player, the previously reviewed Sony BDP-S5000ES. This player came close to becoming a reference 1080p player thanks to its unique “Smoothing” feature, which compensates for the rough gradations which can be introduced when 10-bit HD masters are converted to 8-bit for consumer delivery on Blu-ray. This feature actually worked well and is one of the few video-altering options that I would use, since it returns the quality closer to that of the master, rather than pointlessly altering it. Unfortunately, that particular player was designed in such a way that could cause it to introduce combing/interlacing artefacts, even into a 1080p source, so it lost out on “Reference” status for 1080p playback.
Denon's player does not have any such “Smoothing” feature, which isn't surprising because the technology would appear to be Sony's own proprietary method. Still, I would like to see a similar feature on an expensive BD player from Denon in the future. Of course, the Denon machine doesn't introduce interlacing errors either, as it appears to bypass all Deinterlacing entirely when presented with a 1080p/24 source, so it still wins out overall in terms of image quality. The bottom line is that the DVD-A1 joins a host of other players in providing true-to-disc output and I can easily recommend it for playing back 1080p/24 BD titles.
The DVD-A1 doesn't meddle (unless you tell it to) and as a result, its output quality at 1080p is every bit as good as other BD players I've tested. It doesn't crop any pixels from the image, so it delivers the full 1920x1080 pixels to the display.
In the interests of comparison, it's probably worthwhile to compare the Denon DVD-A1 to one interesting high-end player, the previously reviewed Sony BDP-S5000ES. This player came close to becoming a reference 1080p player thanks to its unique “Smoothing” feature, which compensates for the rough gradations which can be introduced when 10-bit HD masters are converted to 8-bit for consumer delivery on Blu-ray. This feature actually worked well and is one of the few video-altering options that I would use, since it returns the quality closer to that of the master, rather than pointlessly altering it. Unfortunately, that particular player was designed in such a way that could cause it to introduce combing/interlacing artefacts, even into a 1080p source, so it lost out on “Reference” status for 1080p playback.
Denon's player does not have any such “Smoothing” feature, which isn't surprising because the technology would appear to be Sony's own proprietary method. Still, I would like to see a similar feature on an expensive BD player from Denon in the future. Of course, the Denon machine doesn't introduce interlacing errors either, as it appears to bypass all Deinterlacing entirely when presented with a 1080p/24 source, so it still wins out overall in terms of image quality. The bottom line is that the DVD-A1 joins a host of other players in providing true-to-disc output and I can easily recommend it for playing back 1080p/24 BD titles.
1080i Disc Playback
The situation with 1080i is radically different, and performance variation amongst machines is huge. Some players have no HD Deinterlacing circuitry at all and simply output 1080i as-is, leaving it at the mercy of the deinterlacing in your display device, or whatever device is sitting next in the video chain.
For 1080i content on BD, which is still quite rare, there exist a few possible scenarios for how the content was originally shot. These dictate the optimal mode for converting to 1080p for display.
Scenario 1: the material was originally shot on a film camera, or on a digital cinema camera with film-like motion properties, but is “wrapped” in a 60i structure, perhaps because the material was made for TV broadcast, or is mixed in with Video Camera clips. In this case, the video processor must detect the presence of film content and use the correct fields from the interlaced source to reconstruct Progressive frames for output. This is called “film mode processing”.
Scenario 2: the material was originally shot on a film camera, but sped up to 25fps for European HDTV broadcast and delivered on BD as 50i. Contrary to popular belief, there is no 1080p/25 mode on Blu-ray, so having a player that correctly detects the 2-2 cadence is the only way of getting the best results from such discs. A small number of film titles in the UK have been encoded at 50i, which is surprising.
Scenario 3: the material is inherently video-based (shot with a video camera) and utilises the full motion fluidity possible with either 60i or 50i video. Examples include sports programming, documentaries, or any other content that strives for a realistic look rather than a filmic look.
To investigate how the Denon DVD-A1 dealt with Scenario 1, I pulled out the Spears & Munsil BD test disc and ran the source-adaptive deinterlacing patterns. Out of the 10 different cadences, 6 passed. The DVD-A1 does have an alternative “Video2” processing mode which I enabled to see if the results were different; in this case 5 cadences passed, but they were different ones. This is an above average result. The considerably cheaper Panasonic DMP-BD35 machine passes only three of the tests. However, Denon faces stiff competition from Oppo's BDP-83, which passes all ten of the cadence tests with absolutely no user intervention. This is slightly embarrassing given the differing prices for these machines, but also fairly inconsequential given the scarcity of 1080i content on BD. I don't think it's unfair to consider most of these tests pathological; there is a tiny likelihood of the player's limitations being revealed in real-world usage.
The Spears & Munsil disc is 60hz only, but I confirmed that all is well and good with Scenario 2 using a 50hz BD title: 50hz 2-2 material plays correctly on this player.
That leaves Scenario 3: how well the DVD-A1 can suppress jaggies in video material. The answer is very well indeed: the Silicon Optix HQV BD test disc's “Jaggies 2” pattern looked very clean indeed, with all three rotating bars in the test pattern appearing smooth at extreme angles.
For 1080i content on BD, which is still quite rare, there exist a few possible scenarios for how the content was originally shot. These dictate the optimal mode for converting to 1080p for display.
Scenario 1: the material was originally shot on a film camera, or on a digital cinema camera with film-like motion properties, but is “wrapped” in a 60i structure, perhaps because the material was made for TV broadcast, or is mixed in with Video Camera clips. In this case, the video processor must detect the presence of film content and use the correct fields from the interlaced source to reconstruct Progressive frames for output. This is called “film mode processing”.
Scenario 2: the material was originally shot on a film camera, but sped up to 25fps for European HDTV broadcast and delivered on BD as 50i. Contrary to popular belief, there is no 1080p/25 mode on Blu-ray, so having a player that correctly detects the 2-2 cadence is the only way of getting the best results from such discs. A small number of film titles in the UK have been encoded at 50i, which is surprising.
Scenario 3: the material is inherently video-based (shot with a video camera) and utilises the full motion fluidity possible with either 60i or 50i video. Examples include sports programming, documentaries, or any other content that strives for a realistic look rather than a filmic look.
To investigate how the Denon DVD-A1 dealt with Scenario 1, I pulled out the Spears & Munsil BD test disc and ran the source-adaptive deinterlacing patterns. Out of the 10 different cadences, 6 passed. The DVD-A1 does have an alternative “Video2” processing mode which I enabled to see if the results were different; in this case 5 cadences passed, but they were different ones. This is an above average result. The considerably cheaper Panasonic DMP-BD35 machine passes only three of the tests. However, Denon faces stiff competition from Oppo's BDP-83, which passes all ten of the cadence tests with absolutely no user intervention. This is slightly embarrassing given the differing prices for these machines, but also fairly inconsequential given the scarcity of 1080i content on BD. I don't think it's unfair to consider most of these tests pathological; there is a tiny likelihood of the player's limitations being revealed in real-world usage.
The Spears & Munsil disc is 60hz only, but I confirmed that all is well and good with Scenario 2 using a 50hz BD title: 50hz 2-2 material plays correctly on this player.
That leaves Scenario 3: how well the DVD-A1 can suppress jaggies in video material. The answer is very well indeed: the Silicon Optix HQV BD test disc's “Jaggies 2” pattern looked very clean indeed, with all three rotating bars in the test pattern appearing smooth at extreme angles.
480i/576i SD DVD Playback
The DVD-A1 is a star performer with DVD-Video. Not one of the cadence tests I threw at it from either the NTSC or PAL test discs failed, and its Video deinterlacing is also very good: even with troublesome Video material, jaggies were suppressed very well. There is no instance of Chroma Upsampling Error (as we would expect from a modern DVD player, especially at this price), and Denon go a step further and filter out Interlaced Chroma Problem, too.
The quality of the scaling is also excellent. The resolution test chart I tested was crisp and clear, with almost no ringing at all, a feat owed to the processing power of the HQV chipset and its 1024-tap scaler. Unlike Panasonic's BD players and the Playstation 3, the Denon DVD-A1 didn't exaggerate high frequency mosquito noise, so the resulting image was very clean indeed.
There are some cases where machines with edge-adaptive scaling will outperform this one, particularly with computer generated or animated content. In these cases, machines like the Sony BDP-S5000ES and the Playstation3 can produce incredibly convincing scaled images. However, a high quality linear scaler like the one in Denon's machine can look subjectively better for a lot of photorealistic content. In reality, most DVDs are so poorly mastered (with reference to what standard definition resolution is actually capable of) that the results will be equally mediocre no matter how good your player is. Of course, Denon can hardly be blamed for that.
The quality of the scaling is also excellent. The resolution test chart I tested was crisp and clear, with almost no ringing at all, a feat owed to the processing power of the HQV chipset and its 1024-tap scaler. Unlike Panasonic's BD players and the Playstation 3, the Denon DVD-A1 didn't exaggerate high frequency mosquito noise, so the resulting image was very clean indeed.
There are some cases where machines with edge-adaptive scaling will outperform this one, particularly with computer generated or animated content. In these cases, machines like the Sony BDP-S5000ES and the Playstation3 can produce incredibly convincing scaled images. However, a high quality linear scaler like the one in Denon's machine can look subjectively better for a lot of photorealistic content. In reality, most DVDs are so poorly mastered (with reference to what standard definition resolution is actually capable of) that the results will be equally mediocre no matter how good your player is. Of course, Denon can hardly be blamed for that.
Subjective Audio Tests
Comparing audio differences across different machines, and different output modes on those machines, is not an easy task. The time it takes to switch inputs, wait for the HDMI devices to handshake, and even do recabling if necessary, means that direct comparisons are difficult to make and that any differences are going to be hard to spot, unless they're especially blatant. If that wasn't enough, the amount of subjectivity involved in audio does a lot to kill many attempts at rationalizing differences that may or may not exist.
Regardless, I listened to some multichannel PCM, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA soundtracks, with the player hooked up to my Onkyo TX-SR876, driving a 5.1 setup. I made connections over HDMI, split HDMI (with only audio being sent to the amp, rather than audio and video), and with analogue multichannel cables. For the HDMI connections, I also switched between Bitstream and PCM transmission modes. I could detect no differences between any of these modes, and they all sounded fantastic. I've long been a fan of the action-packed soundtracks on discs like “Serenity” and the “Kill Bill” movies, and loved how they sounded when I watched them on this machine.
Regardless, I listened to some multichannel PCM, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA soundtracks, with the player hooked up to my Onkyo TX-SR876, driving a 5.1 setup. I made connections over HDMI, split HDMI (with only audio being sent to the amp, rather than audio and video), and with analogue multichannel cables. For the HDMI connections, I also switched between Bitstream and PCM transmission modes. I could detect no differences between any of these modes, and they all sounded fantastic. I've long been a fan of the action-packed soundtracks on discs like “Serenity” and the “Kill Bill” movies, and loved how they sounded when I watched them on this machine.
Disc Load Times
The DVD-A1U is one of the slower players I've reviewed. From its Off state, the machine took a good 50 seconds to power on and show the DENON logo in the “Power Saving Standby” mode. Users have the option of selecting a “Quick Start Mode” to cut this to around 25 seconds, but this raises power consumption during standby, so really isn't worth it unless you're extremely impatient. After bootup, the machine took another 82 seconds to pre-load disc content on Sony's “The International” and begin showing the opening logo.
Conclusion
Pros
- Untampered-with 1080p output means video quality from 1080p BDs is nearly as good as we could hope for
- Some of the best DVD Video playback I've seen
- Bulletproof build quality
- 2.35:1 stretch mode will benefit Anamorphic projection users
- 10-point gamma adjustment coupled with 36-bit HDMI output potentially allows for correcting gamma problems in the display device without creating new ones
Cons
- Incredibly expensive
- 1080i film mode processing is inferior to one considerably cheaper machine
- A little slow
- Gamma control UI (one of the most useful features) is a pain to use
Denon DVD-A1UD Universal Blu-ray Disc Player Review
The Denon DVD-A1U is an incredibly comprehensive, incredibly expensive optical disc player. It plays 1080p Blu-ray Discs as well as every other player I've reviewed (accurately), and also does an outstanding job of DVD. It handles 1080i HD content better than several other players, although not as well as one considerably cheaper player, which is embarrassing on paper but also fairly inconsequential given the scarcity of 1080i content. Its build quality is the best out of any Blu-ray Disc player that I've ever seen or reviewed, and it's logical that the high quality of construction should lead to some improvements in the quality of the machine's analogue output, still a consideration for a good number of users.
Other than its price and slight sluggishness, there is nothing specifically wrong with the Denon A1 after we ignore the fact that there is really very little reason for most users to spend this sort of money on a disc player - especially if their primary interest is Blu-ray Disc. Owners of large SACD and DVD-Audio collections will be more drawn to the machine, as it's one of a handful of Universal disc players available. Likewise, users (perhaps unduly) concerned about the effects of jitter will enjoy the Denon Link clock-synchronization feature with supported Denon amplifiers.
Still, at the end of the day, the Denon DVD-A1U is a feature-packed player which performs very well in the most important categories. Its slow speed of operation is not enough to stop it from receiving a Highly Recommended badge based on its extensive feature set and performance. However, users should make sure that they really need all of the features it offers before signing on the dotted line. After all - £4500 can buy you a whole lot of shiny plastic discs.
Other than its price and slight sluggishness, there is nothing specifically wrong with the Denon A1 after we ignore the fact that there is really very little reason for most users to spend this sort of money on a disc player - especially if their primary interest is Blu-ray Disc. Owners of large SACD and DVD-Audio collections will be more drawn to the machine, as it's one of a handful of Universal disc players available. Likewise, users (perhaps unduly) concerned about the effects of jitter will enjoy the Denon Link clock-synchronization feature with supported Denon amplifiers.
Still, at the end of the day, the Denon DVD-A1U is a feature-packed player which performs very well in the most important categories. Its slow speed of operation is not enough to stop it from receiving a Highly Recommended badge based on its extensive feature set and performance. However, users should make sure that they really need all of the features it offers before signing on the dotted line. After all - £4500 can buy you a whole lot of shiny plastic discs.
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