My disapointment w\ Denon DVD-2900 (1 Viewer)

[Peter Loan]

I'm sitting 7 feet away from my 50" HDTV and everything looks beautiful with the 2900. Did I also mention that I sold off my iScan Ultra, which scored a perfect 100 on the Secrets test, because the 2900 looks better? The output from the iScan Ultra looked dull in comparison.

You have to ask yourself if it's worth passing on a player because it does not play .01% of the DVDs out there optimally, while making everything else look it's best. I'd have to agree that if you are buying this player for video only, there are better deals out there.

 

[Hank Frankenberg]

I need some advice: I'm a realist and concede that the perfect player is not here yet (affordable, that is). What player has the best SACD and DVD-A AUDIO performance? I would really like an audio-only unit as I don't mind (and might even prefer) to have a separate best-video DVD player and a separate best-audio player.
So what affordable (way under $1,000) player has the best audio performance? Or do I need to wait a few months, which is no problem, as I still enjoy my Sherwood Newcastle CD player.
Thanks in advance!

 

[Bob Saylor]

At least it is only the one problem with the Denon 2900. The Sony 999ES had several glitches. I'd say if the cue trouble with the Denon is the only issue then it's a decent player.

Yeah, we'd like it to be perfect and it should be at this stage of the game. I don't know what is wrong with the manufacturers engineers not giving us a complete product. Remember even the Pannys, while having great video, aren't all that good with music.

The 2900 seems to be the closest yet to getting it right. We're getting closer.

 

[Jeff Adams]

Hank,as you can see, or hear for that matter, the Denon 2900 is a stellar audio player. So if audio is the only thing you are interested in then by all means get the 2900. I however am interested in the video aspect and although the 2900 is also a very good video player, I went with the 1600 and have never been more happy with my picture. I do want to purchase a universal player soon though and might get the 2900 just for audio purposes when the price drops on them.

 

[Luis S]

The way I see it, and Im no expert by any means,is that with sophisticated electronics (hardware/software) there are just too many hands in the pot. What I mean is that you have so many different engineers working on something your bound to have problems. Thats just a fact of life us consumers have to live with. Someone on the design team will miss something or engineers wont mind what the other is doing,it goes on and on. Because of that we'll never have the perfect anything.But the 2900 is damn close!

And Im no conspiracy theorist or anything,but wouldn't a "perfect DVD player" be bad for business? Who the hell would buy any other brand if such a thing existed? Me thinks its unlikely such a beast would exist for this reason alone.

I have never noticed the bug on my calibrated Tosh 40H80. If you have to pause your screen or divert your attention away from the MOVIE YOUR SUPPOSED TO BE WATCHING to see it, I suggest you see a therapist immediately! Overall as I said,anybody on the fence,PLEASE give it an audition for yourself to see what you think. I cant stress that enough! And glad to see others out there that love this machine as much as I do!

Luis S

 

[Luis S]

Jeff,

Did you try the 2900? I had a 1600 for awhile and immediately noticed an improvement in pq when I got the 2900. Just curious regarding your choice. The 1600 is a damn fine player though, no doubt about it.

Later,

Luis S

 

[Don Munsil]

Rodon,

You didn't see the problem in play mode because your player doesn't have it. Stepping through the film frame by frame is a quick way to tell if the DVD has the alternating progressive flag encoding, but that's not the problem.

The problem is when a player reacts to this common encoding by switching upsampling modes every other frame. We've only seen this with a handful of players, including the Denon 2900.

Peter,

I know you're using hyperbole, but it's not .01%. I don't know the exact number, but for heaven's sake, Disney is one of the big 5 DVD companies. It's at least 5% of current releases, and that's a very conservative estimate.

And you can't compare a standalone deinterlacer's score to a DVD player's score (which is why we put them in different groups). Standalone deinterlacers don't take nearly as many tests, so 100 just means it passed all the tests we ran. There are many other DVD players that scored just as well on those same tests, including the Denon 2900 and will obviously look better because the signal isn't going through as many A/D and D/A stages.

Don

 

[Rodon]

Well I got my player today and it is the most awesome player i have ever used.

Here is a breakdown so far in my tests.

Plays my wedding DVD-R just fine - It is an Apple branded disc and burned from a MAC.

The 2900 Plays Monsters Inc beautifully and the whole chapeter five including the car and brick scsenes looks beautiful.

DVD-Audio is awesome - demoed Metallica.

SACD is awesome as well - demoed Pink Floyd and Norah Jones.

Episode two is awesome on it.

I am very very happy with this player. Sweet.

BTW - It has not even gotten warnm and I have been using it since 5:30pm - six and a half hours.

It is sweet - demo one and test for yourself! I ordered mine from 6th Ave in case you care where I got it from.

Have a good night!!!

 

[Kevin C Brown]

I have a thought process...

The 2900 is admittedly one of the best, if not the best universal player available right now. But, as most of us hopefully know, and I think I shall call this the "KeithH corollary," I believe that you can do better with individual players for each.

But. If you have the 2900 now, even if you're not 100% satisfied with it, why not keep it until something better comes along? That way, you're still not giving up quite good DVD-A/SACD ability in the meantime.

(For example, I have a 47ai. Obviously not perfect. I thought about getting a 2900, but I'm gritting my teeth *patiently* waiting for either the 3900/5900, or if Pioneer sees the light and does another DV-09/37 big beefy universal player. Or if Marantz sees the light someday and gets rid of the chroma bug.)

 

[JamesDH]

rodon, i am pleased te hear that you are loving your new dvd-2900. It is a great machine. I have decided to keep the machine and overlook the small imperfections on some DVD's. Perhaps when hd-dvd players come out all these small kinks will be worked out. Of course companies like Disney will always put nots in the string by releasing product that are encoded(like Monsters Inc.) in a less than ideal way. This 3-2 alt. bug is at least a 50% Disney problem and in future releases they should encode their dvd's in a smarter way. Have fun with your dvda and sacd's.....

 

[CurtisC]

I am still trying to figure out WHY anyone would be buying this player for video only.It has so much to offer other than a great monsters inc. presentation.If video is all that matters there's all kinds of cheap players,this unit is designed to be good with all formats,not excell in all for 1k,come on!I love mine but I use it for audio.

 

[Rodon]

Another thought is many dealers will let you trade-up equipment. You may pay a bit more in the beginning than you could on-line or whatever but if they let you trade the model in to step up to the next model you would be way ahead of the game. Just an idea.

I am a definate believer in seperate players would probablybe the way to go but without an All in one DVD-V DVD-A SACD player I probably would have just a DVD-V player. This way I get a sweet player (maybe not the absolute best) of all three.

Very happy and hope others try it out!

 

[Rodon]

Also, let me know if you want any other things tested. I am still trying to get a PAL disc to try that for others. Doubt it will work since I am in US but I will try. Be glad to help you.

ALso if any people want to see it and are in Bloomington,IL area let me know.

 

[Angelo.M]

[The 2900] is definitly the best universal player available.

I'm pretty close to picking one of these up; it sounds great.

I'm curious if anyone has any experience with the Onkyo DV-SP800. Onkyo players don't seem to get much, if any, press around here.

 

[TimmyH]

I've read a few reviews (If you go to eCoustics I think I saw a new review there)of the Onkyo unit, it (and the Integra and Marantz 8300) were all based on the Pioneer 47a (not the improved 47ai)and have the chroma bug. I have an Onkyo receiver and was initially interested in this unit to "keep in the family", but the reviews were pretty mixed so decided to wait, probably until the Denon 3900 (5900?) comes out. If I had the bucks I would look at the new Esoteric (Teac) DV-50 Universal player (list $5,000), which might be REALLY good (for the money it ought to be!)

 

[Bill Blank]

I've had my Denon 2900 for a couple of weeks now and am very pleased with it. Picture quality on the few DVDs I've watched has been excellent. SACD quality has been fantastic as well. I haven't picked up any DVD-A titles yet nor have I compared it's CD playback to my Rega Planet 2000.

The only video flaw I've noticed is on Sound & Visions HT Setup DVD, when you get to the chapter on Red Push, just after the other picture calibrations. The problem isn't that the player has red push, but that the bottom of the girl's sweater has some sort of combed look to it. This is the only time I've seen this so far, anyone have a clue as to what it is?

All in all I'm very satisfied with the player. Remember, we're still in the first stage of the "Univeral" player. No doubt that this player has it's flaws, every universal to date seems to, but I feel Denon's come as close to perfect as anyone.

Bill

 

[JamesDH]

What I'm curious about now is how many titles actually have the 3-2 alt. encding. Maybe we should start a thread and find out. Does 1 in 5 have it? 1 in 10? 1 in 20? Are ALL the latest Disney titles like this?

 

[Brian L]

What I'm curious about now is how many titles actually have the 3-2 alt. encoding. Maybe we should start a thread and find out. Does 1 in 5 have it? 1 in 10? 1 in 20? Are ALL the latest Disney titles like this?

Just go back a few posts and read Don Munsil's comments. All recent Disney titles have the issue, plus hundreds more, I think he said.

FWIW, may I take a moment to say something GOOD about the Pioneer 45A (the player everyone loves to hate)?

Amazingly, that player actually handles the alt.flag issue correctly. Secondly, it has a display button, that among other items, lets you see how a disc is flagged (very helpful). Lastly, you can lock it into film mode, so even if it's deinterlacer can't properly handle a particular disc, you can force the issue so to speak.

Seems like those kind of features are very handy to have on a player, so if your deinterlacer does have problems, you can work around them.

On the negative side, don't get me going with the chroma bug!

As for the 2900, it does sort of seem counterintuitive that Denon can pretty much nail the Secrets test on a $400 1600, but slips up slightly on the $900 2900.

Someday, someone will build a universal player that will nail the Secrets Test, have correct Bass Management and Time Compensation for all modes (without downrezing it), not screw up the .1 channel level, and cost $200.

What on earth will we have to talk about then?

BGL

 

[Dave Vaughn]

It should be noted that Denon didn't really make the 1600, it is a panasonic player built upgraded with Denon Audio chips (or so I have heard). That is why it did so well in the Secrets test...as all of that "family" of DVD players did...XP30, XP50 and RP-82. I tried the XP50 and 1600 and I couldn't stand the interaction on the player. What I mean is that to change chapters on a disk you had to go through too many steps. Also, layer changes on both players were in my opinion, terrible compared to my Sony S7700 and the 2900 blows the S7700 away now. There is no layer change with this player...none at all. Also, the Panasonic (and 1600) takes a long time to load menu's (slower than the Sony and WAY slower than the 2900). Finally, I just don't think the build quality is there on the Panasonic players...too many going bad within the first 12 months. I guess for the money they are good, but the build quality of my old Sony and the 2900 are so much better. Just my $.02 on the matter.

Dave

 

[Don Munsil]

Denon's engineering on the 2900 was excellent. The company that really screwed up was Mitsubishi (the maker of the MPEG decoder). You could argue, I suppose, that Denon should have caught the error and made Mitsubishi fix it, but from what I have heard through the grapevine it took quite a bit of doing just to get Mitsubishi to fix the primary (3-2 normal encoding) case, which they did. This decoder that Denon is using is the latest version of one Pioneer has been using for years (the one, in fact, in the 45A and 47A/47AI). If Pioneer had cared as much about this issue as Denon did, the chroma bug issue would have been fixed years ago.

So while I'm disappointed that the one case isn't fixed, I can't really get too upset with Denon, and I think in general the 2900 is an excellent player. As a consumer, I do feel that you have a right to expect these issues to be right for this kind of money. But at the same time I want to applaud Denon for moving in the right direction.

Don