Denon 2900 Dvd-a/sacd Player At Ces!! (1 Viewer)

[KeithH]

Reggie, it may come down to whether Denon designs the '2900 in house or bases the player off a non-chroma bug player. The '1600 doesn't show the chroma bug, but that's because Denon used the Panasonic 'RP56 as the basis for it. Ironically, the more expensive Denon players ('3800 and '9000) show the chroma bug, as they were designed in house (i.e., not rebadged). Anyway, time will tell.

I hope you are right about the build quality of the '2900. I like the look and feel of the '2800 MkII and '3800.

 

[Marc_E]

Keith,
but as Reggie said, the 3800 and 9000 were fixed and no more bug. It would stand to some (totally speculative) reason that the 2900 would be more like an upgraded 2800 (model numbers?) as opposed to a 1900? You can tell I am just overly excited about info on this unit. I hope it comes with more than just a toslink for dig out! That is a major beef with me and my 1600. I guess we will know soon?
Marc

 

[Daniel Mai]

Well said, Marc. I couldn't believe that a $550 MSRP player doesn't have a coax. I'm very excited about the 2900 also.

I'm DROOLING all over the place. Does anyone know when this unit is suppose to be available?

 

[KeithH]

Marc, sorry to be so anal, but I would like to hear some other opinions about how well Denon fixed the chroma bug on the '2800 and '9000. Denon did not upgrade the MPEG decoder. I question how well a firmware upgrade can work. From what I have read, the firmware upgrade masks the chroma bug to an extent but does not eliminate it.

 

[ReggieW]

Daniel,

The 2900 won't street until June. I too was peeved about the absence of a coaxial plug on the 1600, but as I said earlier, optical has worked fine for me as well. The problem was that Denon used the chasis of a budget Panasonic player to sell what is considered a pretty high end ($549.00 by the markets standards is now considered high-end) device to the general public. I have a cheap sub $100.00 Cyberhome which has bth coaxial and Toslink. The deal-maker on the 2900 for me will be Hdcd decoding and a TIME REMAINING DISPLAY. If it doesn't have this at its price point, then it isn't worth 1K imho. There is a possibility that Denon could pull the same crap that did with the 1600 and leave off important features for a 1K player. The 1600's lack of a coaxial output and a time-remaining display was quite ridiculous considering what they were asking for it. I won't go through this again as there is no reason why a 1K player should lack anything basic in today's climate where new similar players have been announced from pioneer at CES at the $270.00 price point. If the 2900 fails to include these things, then I will have to abandon Denon and look elsewhere.

Reg

 

[Daniel Mai]

Hi Reggie,

June? I don't think I can drooool that long. Hopefully, I can just put it out of my mine 'til then.

I guess it's a matter of flexibility on the coax or optical. Once it's hooked up, it'll be forgotten about, but I have more coaxes and only one optical(for SAT) and I feel that the optical is too fragile. Still, at that price and no coax, is totally ridiculous.

Like Marc had mentioned above, if it's a 3800 with SACD, I wouldn't have to think twice before unloading my Yamaha S2300. Heck, if it's a 1600 with all the features you've described, I'd get that too.

It's funny how little features would bother us so much that it's a deal breaker. For you, it's the HDCD and Time Remaining. For me, I dislike the Yamaha's orange display so much that I have not even bother looking at their products for 6 years now, but a I couldn't tear myself away from it's universal capability at the store. I still hate the orange display everytime I look at it. Also, IMO as such with the Panansonic RP-82, I can't stand looking at how mirror/silvery and how cheap it looks(I hope not to offend any RP-82 fans). The store had both Denon and Yamaha and I couldn't justify buying the Denon w/o SACD at that price point. Now, I love SACD.

 

[Marc_E]

I understand Keith.
The opt and coax issue is that I have a monarchy dip that I run multi-channel through and will be hooking up a DAC also. I do not want it in line with the DIP so for now I will have to pull the plug and switch depending on what I will be listening to/viewing. It is also build like a $199 player (as the RP56 is, probably less now). I read somewhere else that it would street in May. Not a big difference unless you are a fanatic as some of us (me) are.
Marc

 

[Marc_E]

Hi again,
I just went to the secrets site and they have some info on CES including a picture of the 2900
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volum...03-page-1.html
Looks like a 2800 case to me.

Denon's new universal player accommodates Progressive DVD-V, DVD-Audio, and SACD. $999 MSRP. Denon says it won't have the chroma bug.

drool has increased.
3800 is looking out to me.
2900 in.
Marc

 

[John_W_Jr]

Just as I've been following the 3800 threads and Denon's progress with all of the fixes, they announce the release of the 2900!
Well, count me in for one!!!

 

[KeithH]

Marc, thanks for the hometheaterhifi.com link. Here what they say about the '2900:

Denon's new universal player accommodates Progressive DVD-V, DVD-Audio, and SACD. $999 MSRP. Denon says it won't have the chroma bug.

Cool.

 

[Lewis Besze]

Keith,
Denon is the only mfr.that admits to the problem and they worked on it to eliminate it.It was mentioned brieflyhere.

 

[ReggieW]

Guys,
I viewed the picture at the link and it looks outstanding so far. It does appear to have the 2800-3800 series build quality and appears to be built in house by Denon. I hear Denon will have a higher-end combo model this fall and it will be on the same level as the Denon 9000. I now wonder how much better can this forthcoming high-end model be than the 2900 for many times the cost. Imho, I never thought the Denon 9000 was worth three times the price of the 3800 as they had virtually the same picture quality with the 9000 having a slight edge in music reproduction. I will be in my new apartment this summer so will likely relegate the Dvd-1600 to bedroom status to make way for the 2900, or I may just sell it.
Reg

 

[Doug Fogle]

okay,I know were guessing now,but which do you think would have better cd playback=2900 or phillips 963sa?Would the 2900 have anything better than the 963(besides dvd=a)to justify being double the cost?Man,this is frustrating.Been waiting for the 963 forever,and now wonder if I should keep on waiting for the 2900.Help!!

 

[ReggieW]

Doug,

The 2900 is a universal player the 963 is SACD only. Personally, I have always had reliability issues with Phillips players so would never personally consider them again. As far as the specs go, the 2900 does appear to have excellent new generation Burr-Brown DAC's and excellent build quality, but as you said, it's all speculation until we see reviews for the 2900 - which probably won't be for many months. The Denon probably won't upsample redbook CD's, but I have made it known that I haven't been impressed with this feature when I've seen it implemented, which is probably why Denon and a few other manufacturer's won't bother with it.

Reg

 

[Eric_RP]

I looked at the picture provided in the link by Marc and it looks like the unit may be based on the 3800 not the 2800, because it appears that it has the "pure direct" selector knob on the lower right hand side of the unit. I currently have the 3800, but if the video and DVD-A playback are the same then I will be trading in my 3800 for a 2900. Then I can also get rid of my lessor Sony DVD/SACD player and the switchbox and interconnect mess I've got growing behind my shelf unit
I can't wait to get some reviews!
Eric

 

[KeithH]

Lewis,

Unfortunately, I could not get that hometheaterhifi.com link to work.


Reggie,

I certainly hope the '2900 shows the build quality of the '3800. It looks like a great piece. I wonder how it will stack with the other universal players available.

 

[TanD]

if the picture show on that link is the dvd 2900, it just look like the 3800 from button to button. i wonder since the 3800 has the BurrBrown 1738 DAC, may be it will be upgrade to SACD as well, if not i don't think any one would buy the 3800 for more money than the 2900.

 

[ReggieW]

TanD,

This is also another concern of mine. What exactly did they leave out on the 2900 to make the 3800 more desirable? Well, one major difference is he 2900 is Faroudja based and the 3800 is Silicon (which is in "theory" better than the Faroudja based chips), which is a noted difference in the player video sections. It could be that the 2900 will be a 3800 with SACD enabled and even better DAC's and is meant as a 3800 replacement. This does happen often in the audio/video industry. Remember last year when the RP-82 came out and offered the same audio quality but better video quality than the Rp-91 sans the scaling capability of the Rp-91? Many were willing to forgo the scaling feature for better video quality and the cheaper price tag of the 82 and a few were not. The same applies with the 2900/3800 -some may simply prefer the Silicon chip and not have an interest in SACD. I do wonder if Denon will keep the 2800MKII in production now - it does seem to be the odd man out here being squeezed between the chroma-bug free 1600 and now the 2900.

Reg

 

[Dan Hitchman]

Well, if the 2900 has a properly implemented Faroudja 2300-class DCDi chip, and uses a non-chroma bug producing MPEG-2 decoder that would probably make it better in the video department than the current Silicon chips.

I've seen screen pictures of a Philips 963SA SACD/DVD player with the new Faroudja 2300 chip hooked to a front projector. The image, to me, was very accurate and very smooth (no jaggies) with absolutely no trace of the chroma bug. The colors popped! Then the same projector had a known chroma bug "infected" progressive player hooked up and photos taken. Streaks and noise up the wazoo on bright, solid colors.

Now, my question is this: will the Denon 2900 compromise the DSD bitstream like all current universal players (except the uber expensive high end units) by converting it to PCM in order to perform bass management and delay functions (and to run it through the universal audio DAC's)?

This is a known and admitted (although swept under the rug by most manufacturers of universal players) problem with players that don't have totally separate pathways and dedicated DAC's created for the very different DSD and PCM format requirments.

Do you suppose, in the long run, that it would be better to get a good SACD audio-only player (like the 555ES) and then a separate high quality progressive scan DVD-Video/Audio player?

Dan

 

[MikeSRC]

The 2900 will be using the SI 504 chip. I posted some more info and a picture here: Denon DVD-2900