Denon DVD-1910 DVD Player

This is a review the Denon DVD-1910 / DVD-755. These models are exactly the same, except that the 1910 is black and the 755 is silver.

Out of the box, this unit is very light; about as light as the sub-$100 players that currently flood the market. It's not "ultra slim" like most players these days, but more along the height of the players that were the norm a couple of years ago. The front of the DVD player is designed to have a more high-end style which looks cool on my a/v rack.

The drive itself seems to have a quality laser similar to my old Sony NS-325's Precision Drive 2, which is able to read some problematic discs better than the cheap China/Korean/etc. models out there. The response is about the same as my Sony, which means it's slower than a lot of other models that I've tested over the past few weeks. Layer changes take about 0.75 to 1 second.

I really, really miss the multi-disc resume feature from my Sony. The Denon only provides resume memory for the current disc that you have in the drive. I swap discs frequently (TV shows, dirty discs, etc.) and considering the higher price of this player, I'm surprised this functionality wasn't included.

I'm not sure why this player doesn't support VCDs and SVCDs. The manual says "NEVER play back these discs. Otherwise, malfunction may result!" Come on, even sub-$50 players can play VCDs. This doesn't affect me much, and I tried the only VCD I had (a store-bought collection of Firehouse videos) and sure enough the player told me that it was an unsupported disc. However, I have heard that some people have been able to get VCDs to play. Maybe they need to be on CD-R? I'll update this section as soon as I know...

The remote layout is excellent; a very sleek design. It even has seperate Power-On and Power-Off buttons, which is great if you have a master remote that can program macros.

As far as picture quality goes, I've hooked it up via component connection (My 43HT20 is too old for DVI). The "macroblocking" issue has gotten some controversy lately, but it was not noticable on my TV after system calibration. The player came out of the box with a very high brightness level, and I saw some macroblocking and color dithering. However, after I turned the Black Level setting "Off" and recalibrated my TV using Digital Video Essentials, all looked good.

Overall, this is a very good player, albeit somewhat overpriced considering its lack of features that can be found on extremely cheap players. You're buying for the name and repuation. There are cheaper Faroudja-based players out there (Zenith/LG and Samsung come to mind) but be warned:
- Zenith/LG no longer supports upscaling via component thanks to recent firmware updates, and component 480p has horrid Y/C delay. (Watch the opening scroll of any Star Wars movie and you'll see terrible bleeding of the colors).
- Samsung apparently doesn't use the Faroudja chip when outputting via component.

Finally, the great guys at Home Theater Secrets have just released a very comprehensive review of this player at:
http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/cgi-bin/shootout.cgi?function=search&articles=all&type=&manufacturer=15&maxprice=0&deInt=0&mpeg=0#DenonDVD-1910

I would strongly recommend you read this review if you're a Home Theater buff, as it delves into the deinterlacing quality of the Faroudja FLI-2301 chip.

So it looks like Denon is the best deal in town. Definately check it out!