Denon DVD-2910: Mr Universal

By Guy Cocker on 13 June 2005, 11:24am

We're enjoying a decadent lifestyle this morning, unboxing a £500 Denon DVD player after gorging on caviar and champagne for breakfast. True, spending so much on the most basic of AV equipment might seem churlish in these days of £20 bargains, but the Denon DVD-2910 is not your average disc spinner -- it's a 'Universal' player that supports pretty much every major format available.

In fact, we lost out in a challenge to find a disc in the office that it wouldn't play with aplomb. Across the board, it will happily throw out superb quality DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD music, as well as play Kodak Picture CDs and Windows Media Audio. All this, plus new-fangled HDMI/DVI connections had us lighting an elegant cigar to celebrate.

If you've got a flatscreen TV (and let's face it, you should have if you're going to splurge £500 on a DVD player), the Denon can upscale standard DVD movies to high-definition resolutions. "Whoa there!" we hear you cry, "Does that mean I can have high definition now?" Well, not quite -- DVD video is still way behind true hi-def, but it means that the player will fill some of the holes when your movies are blown up on the big screen. So while the Denon is busy working away on clever interpolating and de-interlacing the image, you're left with a gloriously smooth picture that's detailed, extremely colourful and pin-sharp. We just wish we could have paired this heavyweight up with NEC's equally splendid 61-inch plasma, but rather unreasonably they wanted their £9,700 TV back.

The only thing that's noticeable by its absence is DivX playback, but given the quality of its picture performance, we think it would quite literally spit a DivX disc out in disgust. We'll have more on this premium Denon player once we've finished our cigar. -GC