Publicado pela revista inglesa What Hi-Fi Sound and Vision
Preço: £ 900
* * * * *
The finest way to play Blu-ray discs yet – a must-see performer.
For
Excellent Blu-ray performance in every regard; outstanding DVD playback, too; classy build
Against
It’s only a transport, so might not suit every user; not Profile 2.0, if that matters to you
The Denon DVD-2500BT Blu-ray transport is aimed at dedicated home cinema enthusiasts: it doesn’t have any analogue audio outputs, and doesn’t even have coaxial or optical digital sockets.
If you want one, you’ll need an amp, receiver or processor that can accept audio signals from HDMI and use them appropriately (in theory that means you could also connect to a TV with speakers, but this thing costs £900 – are you really going to do that?).
The good news is almost all modern surround sound amps support digital audio sent via HDMI, with most models from £300 providing full decoding for high-definition audio formats like Dolby TrueHD.
Given the Denon’s price, it’d be right at home with anything from £800 up, such as Yamaha’s DSP-AX863SE or Denon’s own AVR-2809.
Televisual turbocharger
This player’s colour vitality, detail retrieval and uncanny realism is just stunning. It’s so good, it’s able to take discs we’ve known and loved for many a month – Training Day, I Am Legend – and give them a whole new lease of life.
Reds seem redder, blacks denser, edges sharper, while three-dimensionality increases and motion-stability seems more assured. It genuinely is a turbocharger for your telly (and that’s on our reference-grade Pioneer plasma, itself no slouch).
If that seems impressive, the audio is even more remarkable. It imbues everything you listen to with more weight and realism, more scale and drama; gunfire seems weightier and more menacing, voices sounds more natural and characterful.
The icing on the cake for this machine is DVD replay. The DVD-2500BT will upscale your DVDs to 1080p (should you need it), and while Denon makes no great claims for its picture-enhancing properties, direct comparison with our Award-winning Marantz DV7001 DVD player went resoundingly in the Denon’s favour.
It’s smoother, less troubled by digital noise and more insightful. Even CD replay is at least on a par with the Marantz: a shade smoothed off and pedestrian at the bottom end, but certainly articulate enough to carry a tune.
Almost flawless performance
So where are the downsides? We can see only two. One, this is a transport, and as such, must be used with the appropriate kit. Given its price, we don’t see that as an issue.
Second, this is ‘only’ a BD Profile 1.1 compliant player: it may miss out on some interactive features available in some rivals, and it doesn’t have an Ethernet port to serve as compensation (although it does provide an SD card slot, which can be used for extra feature support).
But you know what? We really don’t care. This is what Blu-ray really ought to have been straight from the off. It probably spells the end for higher-end DVD players, too.
If you have an eye on premium-quality home cinema, it’s a must-try.
HD DVD
No
Blu-ray
Yes
DVD-Video
No
DVD-A
No
SACD
No
CD
Yes
MP3
Yes
DivX
Yes
DVD-R/-RW
Yes
DVD+R/+RW
Yes
DVD-RAM
No
HDMI out
1
HDMI 1.3a
Yes
DVI out
0
Component out
0
RGB Scart out
0
S-Video out
0
Composite out
0
Optical digital out
0
Coaxial digital out
0
Phono audio out
0
FireWire out
0
Multichannel analogue out
No
Video scaling
1080p
24fps
Yes
Dolby Digital Plus decoding
Yes
DTS HD decoding
Yes
Dolby TrueHD decoding
Yes
DTS HD Master Audio decoding
Yes
Dolby decoding
Yes
DTS Decoding
Yes
PCM decoding
Yes
Dolby Digital Plus HDMI output
Yes
DTS HD HDMI output
Yes
Dolby TrueHD HDMI output
Yes
DTS HD Master Audio HDMI output
Yes
PCM HDMI output
Yes
Dimensions (hwd, cm)
14x43x39
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