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New Denon 4800 Prog. Scan Player Looks Very Familiar (1 Viewer)

Michael Lee

Supporting Actor
Joined
Jan 7, 1998
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652
Amidst the chaos that happened in the New York Metro area, the men in brown pulled through and delivered my Denon AVR-4802's and DVM-4800's. I was pleasantly surprised by this. When I plugged it in, the first thing I noticed was that the remote looked very similar to the 2800...not good. A few extra buttons on the bottom for disc selection, but it is not very ergonomic. It is a great argument for a Pronto though.
The big resemblance, though, is the menus. It is, at first glance, exactly like the Panasonic RP-91. I have to look closer at them both, but it really appears to be identical. I set my settings just like my Panny. The scaling worked exactly like the 91..it failed to recognize Titanic in auto, but scaled it beautifully. I have to look a lot closer for a chroma bug though. It is hooked up to my Sony 10HT and I don't usually have the Panny hooked up to it.
The major plus is one I mentioned in another thread. It has bass management of reportedly 4 settings. I have not hooked it up yet but I will in a day or two. I did hear it at CEDIA and was very impressed.
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KeithH

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Michael, it is not uncommon for companies to rebadge other manufacturers products, at least to some extent, every so often. I've seen this with Onkyo and Toshiba DVD players. Some of them are remarkably similar in appearance and function. I don't know who is rebadging what in that case. I've also noticed that Rotel's RCD-955 carousel CD changer uses the same LCD display as Denon DCM-270 and DCM-370 carousel CD changers. The Rega Planet 2000 and Arcam DiVa CD72 CD players use the same LCD displays, except that they differ in color (red for the Rega and green for the Arcam).
Anyway, I have never been too impressed with Denon's remotes from what I have seen in stores. I own a DCM-370, and the remote is not that good. Lots of small buttons that are all the same shape.
I'd like to hear more about bass management with the DVM-4800. Do you have the Panasonic DVD-RP91 in another system? I'd like to hear your thoughts about relative picture quality and DVD-Audio performance between these two machines.
By the way, how is the LCD display on the '4800? I liked the look, feel, and performance of the DVM-3700 from last year, but the LCD display was awful, in my opinion. All the numbers ran together, so it was difficult to read the track number and time counter. Hopefully Denon fixed this with the '4800.
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[Edited last by KeithH on September 12, 2001 at 10:17 PM]
 

Andrew P

Second Unit
Joined
Nov 2, 1999
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304
At least Denon picked the right player to rebadge. I give them a lot of credit for that. I hate their remote though (especially if it is the same as the one packaged with the 2800.)
On a side note my Kenwood 5700 will be arriving tomorrow so I can test it againt my current player the Panasonic DVD-RP91.
Andy
 

Michael Lee

Supporting Actor
Joined
Jan 7, 1998
Messages
652
I have now found a glitch--When I am using the scaling feature, there are random blackouts for split-seconds. It is odd, it almost looks like someone walked in front of my front projector very quickly. It happens intermittently-twice in five minutes or so. I will try another one tonight to make sure it is just this player.
The remote is very similar to the 2800 and I hate it. The button layout is not intuitive at all.
I think the picture is very similar to the Panasonic RP-91 that I do have hooked up to my Toshiba 65" set. I have not hooked up either player to do DVD-Audio yet--I moved a couple of months ago and things aren't all set yet. I did have a Toshiba 9200 hoked up at one time...so I know what DVD-Audio can do.
I also feel that the LCD display is a little weak. The display is a run-on of numbers that are a little difficult decipher from a distance.
This post may sound negative, but overall so far, I like this player quite a bit.
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Michael Lee

Supporting Actor
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Jan 7, 1998
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652
Denon is going to get a bad reputation for their DVD players now. I tried a second 4800 today and it has the same blackout problem. It is only when it is in "Zoom" mode, which is the scaling feature. Two players imply a model problem, not a specific player. I find this very disappointing.
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Andrew P

Second Unit
Joined
Nov 2, 1999
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304
Michael:
Thanks for the update. I was going to try this player out, but ill give up on Denon now with dvd players. I got burned with the 2800 and im not about to do this again.
Andy
 

Jeremy Hegna

Supporting Actor
Joined
Nov 28, 2000
Messages
812
"I got burned with the 2800 and im not about to do this again."
Come on Andrew....nobody got burned, it's an excellent player....you should read "The Secrets" report again. Assuming the chroma bug isn't an issue for most, the 2800 delivers in spades.
Michael, that is disappointing. Have you talked with Denon about it? They were pretty quick to give us F/W upgrades on the 2800 to resolve noticable issues. Might be worth the call.
Jeremy
 

Andrew P

Second Unit
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Nov 2, 1999
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304
Jeremy:
We still disagree on the 2800, but that is fine. I thought that situation was a fiasco and now Michael is reporting more problems.
For me personally I will not give Denon dvd players another try. Anyway it seems that the 4800 is a rebadged Panasonic which I already own. The only advantages of the 4800 are a 5 disc changer (which to me is a disadvantage) and bass management for the few dvd-audio titles that are available.
Andy
 

Peter Jessee

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Sep 25, 2000
Messages
149
After looking through the new Crutchfield catalog, I think I've solved the great Panasonic "Disappearing DVD Player" mystery. Remember the -71 changer and -61 single disc players that were suddenly pulled from the market? Look at the Denon 4800 and 1600 players. I think Denon had
Panasonic build the new units for them, and then the two of them agreed to not compete with each other.
BTW, the remote shared by the 2800 and 4800 is identical in shape to the one that came with my 5-year-old, $220 Magnavox VCR. It actually fits your hand pretty well, and the transport controls are easily worked with your thumb (if you're right handed, at least), but it's a pretty uninspiring remote for a $800-1200 DVD player.
I'm curious to hear about the 4800's sound quality, both with CD's and DVD-A's. It may be quite good. And if the picture quality matches the -91 (I don't need the zoom function), it could be a very attractive package.
Peter
 

Darryl_B

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Mar 2, 2001
Messages
66
Michael,
Have you gotten a chance to test out some torture material with the 4800? It may look similar to the RP91 now, but it may have more to it's video quality than the RP91. From my understanding (and I could be wrong), the 4800 was supposed to be using a new Genesis chip (gm6020). From the description on the Genesis Microchip website, this single chip apparently does both deinterlacing and 2:2/3:2 pulldown detection and also has a SDRAM capability (unlike the gmVLX1A-X and gmAFMC combination chips used by other players). What this suggests to me (and again, I'm only guessing), is that if the SDRAM is being utilized it may be touching closer to the film-mode performance of the Si503 and FLI2200 chipsets, but still may not offer motion-adaptive deinterlacing for the video-mode.
I'm also assuming the super sub-alias filter is supposed to make the video of some disc have less noise than usual.
 

Michael Lee

Supporting Actor
Joined
Jan 7, 1998
Messages
652
Darryl-
I did not have the units long enough to put it through its paces in an A/B test. I will do it when I get two replacement units for the others.
I called Denon Service on this and I was the first person that they heard mention this problem. And it is clearly a problem...I tried it on my 65" Toshiba and played with the settings. I still cannot see the difference if I set the player to direct view, CRT projector, LCD projector or rear projector. There is still the flickering picture as long as progressive and scaling are occurring. I am expecting a return phone call tomorrow and I will post an update here.
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Michael Lee

Supporting Actor
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Jan 7, 1998
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652
The only word I have received is that Denon needs a widescreen monitor to display this on to investigate the scaling in progressive problem. The major problem with this is that their widescreen monitors were stuck at CEDIA. A lot of the equipment there got stranded after the flying freeze this past week. I am expecting the two replacements tomorrow. I sure hope this is just a bad batch rather than a design flaw that affects the entire line. I will try out the others tomorrow and hope to hear from Denon later this week.
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Trevor Schell

Supporting Actor
Joined
Jan 6, 1999
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511
Michael,,
You are impossible to keep up to! :)
Good greif!,,I never even heard of the 4800 DVD player.
Any pictures available.
BTW..I still love my 9200.
Thanks,
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Trevor..
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Curtis_Edwards

Stunt Coordinator
Joined
Jan 1, 2001
Messages
101
Michael, hope it all works out. I am eager to find out the results from Denon. The Denon and Panni are my two choices for DVD players.
Everytime I think I have it figured out someone comes up with something else to think about.
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James D S

Screenwriter
Joined
Nov 14, 2000
Messages
1,000
Michael,
Any word yet? Fix coming?
This is some pretty sad news. I was hoping Denon would get their act together since the more quality players we get to choose from, the better for us all.
This after their problematic 2800 does not bode well.
I was hoping they would at least nix the upsampling problem.
Any word on this?
 

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