Blu-ray Marantz BD8002

Publicado pela revista inglesa What Hi-Fi

Preço: £ 1600

Avaliação: * * * *  (quatro estrelas de cinco)

Among the front-runners where pictures are concerned, but it sounds too unadventurous to really stake a claim

For
Reassuring build quality; enthralling Blu-ray pictures

Against
Unbecoming softness to HD audio

If you want to charge well in excess of a grand for a Blu-ray player, straightforward picture and audio performance isn’t going to be enough to make your product stand out.

Marantz understands this as well as anyone, which is why its BD8002 looks as impregnable as a bank vault. If all else fails here, at least your £1600 buys the sort of build quality that wouldn’t shame a battleship.

Of course, having rapped your knuckles on the lid of the player, the second thing to do is scrutinise the spec sheet.

Profile 1.1, so no BD Live
Here the Marantz gives a good account of itself (outputting the HD audio codecs via 7.1 analogue as well as digital HDMI connections, and packing an SD memory card slot to allow pictures, video and music to be viewed) while not convincing across the board (Profile 1.1 means no BD Live content, and there’s no SACD or DVD-A playback).

Set-up is simple, thanks to big menus and an unremarkable remote. Waiting for a disc to load, on the other hand, requires patience.

Blu-ray players aren’t noted for their speed, but the Marantz has the knack of waiting until you’re just getting out of your seat to see what’s gone wrong before deigning to load a disc.

Blu-ray images are worth the wait
Once up and running though, minor quibbles are forgotten. The Marantz delivers sumptuous images from our Training Day disc. Contrast is handled deftly, the BD8002 allowing bright whites and deep blacks to happily coexist without sacrificing coherence or insight.

The colour palette is rich, with skin tones particularly satisfying, and there’s fine stability during rapid motion.

As impressive as Blu-rays look, the Pioneer BDP-LX91 does offer superior detail, while the Sony BDP-S5000ES presents slightly crisper pictures, with the added bonus of it being £400 cheaper than the Marantz.

With sound, the BD8002’s midrange is fluid while treble is smooth, but its low frequencies can lack tautness and punch at times. The Marantz can sound overblown more often than is comfortable – and this is equally true of decoded soundtracks output via the multichannel analogue outputs.

Low-end lacks punch with films
When it comes to DVD playback, images remain vibrantly hued and the BD8002 handles movement assuredly, though there’s more picture noise visible than some price-comparable players allow to intrude.

DVD soundtracks are full-bodied and finely nuanced, but the low end again lacks punch, and it’s this across-the-board inability to inject any urgency into the low frequencies that makes the Marantz rather lazy with CDs.

Six months ago the lack of worthwhile competition at this price-point would have meant an almost default recommendation for the Marantz. Right now, though, the BD8002 doesn’t quite have the all-round game for us to recommend it unconditionally.

If your only consideration is Blu-ray pictures, by all means go right ahead – but, at this price, we demand a little more sonic virtuosity to go with the bomb-proof build.

Tech Specs

HD DVD
No
Blu-ray
Yes
DVD-Video
Yes
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
1
RGB Scart out
0
S-Video out
1
Composite out
1
Optical digital out
1
Coaxial digital out
1
Phono audio out
1
FireWire out
0
Multichannel analogue out
8ch
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)
40x44x14