Denon unveiled the “world’s first high-end Blu-ray player”, DVD-A1UDCI, back in December last year, saying the device supports Blu-ray discs, SACDs, CDs, audio and video DVDs. The company then said the player will hit Japanese stores in January 2009 and will be available in the US one month later. But that never happened.
Denon announced the DVD-A1UDCI, a universal player that supports Blu-ray discs, SACDs, CDs, DVD-Audio and DVD-Video, back in December for the Japanese market. The company today announced [JP] it will release the player, which was scheduled for release in Nippon this month, in March 2009.
Denon outed the amazing DVD-A1UDCI Blu-ray player – which we predicted back at CEDIA – just the other day and thankfully, us here in the States will not have to deal with the exchange rate. You see, the European model carries a MSRP of 4,000 Euros which works out to be a whopping $5,800 in US dollars. The US-bound model, however, will sell for only (LOL) $3,800 which works out to be 1,000 Euro less. Ouch. All the universal goodies remain so chances are this player will become the de-facto reference player when it drops in February ‘09.
Denon today announced what they say is the the world’s first high-end Blu-ray universal player [JP], meaning it can play Blu-ray discs, SACDs, CDs, DVD-Audio and DVD-Video. The DVD-A1UD (strange name) is the successor of the DVD-A1XV.
Denon says its DENON Link 4th technology (in combination with HDMI 1.3) dramatically reduces jitter, leading to an improved sound quality from all digital sources. Hirofumi Ichikawa, the company CEO, claims Blu-ray, DVD, SACD and CD users will get the best audio and video results they have ever seen.
Denon Japan announced it will start selling a turntable [JP] that features a USB port to transfer music from analog records to USB memory sticks as digital music files at the beginning of next month. The DP-200USB will be available in black and silver (price: $300).
Denon says all that users have to do in order to save music as MP3 (in 192kbps quality) is to play their 30cm or 17cm records and press the “record” button.
There is no word yet if the turntable will ever be sold outside Japan as well, but chances should be pretty good.
Most large manufacturers at CEDIA this year are showing off their latest Blu-ray players. A good amount of the ‘new players’ are unfortunately profile 1.1 and therefore, not BD Live capable, but there was a buzz going around the show floor concerning Denon’s upcoming super player. Something about a $3800-$4000 Blu-ray king coming out early next year.
I managed to snag sometime with the Director of Product Development & Systems Integration who told me straight-faced, that they will have it at CES. Initially, he wouldn’t comment on anything else, but he eventually indicated that yes, it will be a Profile 2.0 player. I can’t wait for CES — and the obligatory early leeks.
And you wonder why people are still uncommitted to Blu-ray. Denon, by no means a cheap brand, mind you, has said that they’ll begin shipping its “low” priced DVD-1800BD this October, for $749. Denon hasn’t even released its full specs yet, so it’s impossible to evaluate if this is even worth the money.
Once again, I think I speak for most of the gang here: if you’re thinking about going Blu-ray, especially in time for the holiday season, your best best is to go with the PS3. Not only is it future-proof, but, eventually, it’ll have some decent games on it, with apologies to MGS 4.
Denon, purveyor of reasonably-priced Ethernet cables, will be releasing its natural wood and mahogany AH-D7000 headphones in mid-September. You can currently grab the lesser AH-D5000 headphones for about $700.
The AH-D7000 cans will have an MSRP of 800 Euro, which is just under $1,200 USD – roughly 1/3 of what my first car cost. It was a 1990 Mitsubishi Mirage.
[Press Release (translated) via Akihabara]
NBC has turned to Denon with help on the audio control for this years Olympics. As it turns out, this is the fifth straight Olympic games that Denon has been involved with. The AV company suppled NBC with their top of the line gear for work in post-production. Denon’s flagship audio/video receiver, the AVR-5308, plus a DVD-1940 are installed in the Executive Board Room, while two AVR-2808 and two DVD-1940’s are elsewhere for NBC meetings.
If you ask us, this says a good deal about Denon products – or Denon paid good coin to be at the games. Your guess.
Today Denon announced [JP] they will start selling their first noise-cancelling headphones at the begining of August. The on-ear AH-NC732 will be available in black and silver.
The headphones come with a frequency response of 5Hz-28,000Hz, an impedance of 40Ω and a maximum power input of 100mW. Denon claims noise will be cut by 99%. One AAA battery is needed for 40 hours of active noise cancellation.
The headphones will cost $350 in Japan. Denon already offers a number of headphones in the USA, for example, so it would be no surprise to see the AH-NC732 find its way to markets outside Japan soon.
Reviews for that $500 Ethernet cable being sold by Denon are in full swing on the Amazon.com product page, located here. Here are a couple of choice tidbits…
“A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the ‘directional markings’ on the cables, your music will play backwards. Please check that before mentioning it in your reviews.”
“I installed one of these cables between my gigabit ethernet switch and my Canon Pixma 6700 color printer. I know it’s not a sanctioned use, but I was looking for the ultimate in speed and color fidelity. I’m freaky that way.
The first time I downloaded a picture to the printer over this cable, the bits moved so fast the printer collapsed into a naked singularity, right there in my office.”
“Marked down 1 star because it still won’t let you do the Kessel run in less than 12 parsecs.”
“Like a fool, I bought these cables on a whim because of the low price. However, I got what I paid for when I installed them in my TARDIS. Before long it shorted out my chameleon circuit and Amazon refuses to pay for repairs! I guess it’ll be stuck looking like a 1963 police call box until I can somehow get enough money for a replacement.”
"I accidentally dropped one end of my Denon cable into a glass of Tuscan whole milk I was drinking. Later when I finished my milk (yeah, I still drank it; should I not have done that?), my right arm (lost in an accident in 1987) spontaneously grew back.
Is that normal?""I used 6 of them to connect up my time machine to my Starship. But now my cell phone won’t work. Must be interference from the planet being out of phase with my blue tooth headset.
On the bright side…it negated the affects of the Aurora Borealis over my house."
Customer Reviews: Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable [Amazon] via Newsvine
If you’re the kind of DJ who likes to dual-wield iPods or keep your vinyl on your MacBook, maybe you should take a look at this thing. It’s got a huge amount of features, ports for USB stuff, and space for you to put your own 2.5″ drive in. It has to be PATA, formatted for FAT32, but whatever. Judging from the sheer number of buttons, dials, and toggles on the top of the thing, you can do just about anything to your mp3 or wave files. It’s also got a tight little LCD screen and a proprietary music management program. Actually, I could do without that last one.
This week: Computers, set-top boxes (like AppleTV), and AV
receivers are battling to be your household hub, streaming music and
movies back and forth across your pad until you become sterile and
glow in the dark. All this gear is versatile, but it’s hard to know
which one to pick — especially when hefty sums of money are involved.
Sonos and now Denon seem to have the most promising solutions, but
life is passing their equipment by while gadgets like the iPhone and
Archos’s 605 WiFi threaten to swoop in and take all.
Amid a slew of new releases yesterday at the Hyatt in Jersey City, Denon introduced a WiFi iPod dock, the ASD-3W. It looks like a hockey puck with a dock and an antenna, but it’s much more: It actually lets you network most AV components like receivers, TVs, and some speakers, whether they’re from Denon or not. It lets you stream music, photos, and that precious but beleaguered Internet radio to those components from anywhere on your network — your PC, NAS, or an iPod that’s sitting in the dock on top.
Best of all, it gives you a TV-screen interface and remote to work with, so you can see what’s going where, and you get metadata and album art on songs that are playing off your iPod. Not bad for $229.99 (available in September), though if you don’t need the WiFi, you can pick up the non-wireless ASD-3N for $179.99 (available in August). Both models have Ethernet ports, RCA outputs, and S-Video outputs on the back.
Boston Acoustics and Denon Electronics today announced a collaborative contest that will give one extremely lucky person an extreme home theater makeover featuring electronics, furniture and installation worth more than $17,000.
The criteria of the contest are thus: Read More
Denon finally returned to the consumer headphone market, and they’ve made a big splash with their latest offerings. I spent some quality time with the AH-C700 (available in black or silver), and the upshot is that I’m not going to wait 2 days to call. They’re not cheap dates, though, at about $200. But they have such nice extension in both the bass and the treble that they rival similarly priced favorites from Etymotic and Shure, and they’re pretty tough to beat on comfort and build quality.
Read More
Speculation has the receivers being released in two waves, with two high-end models arriving in July and three less-expensive units hitting in September. The top models—the $2,500 AVR-4308CI and $1,600 AVR-3808CI—will “include four HDMI 1.3 inputs, support for internal Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD audio decoding, built-in Ethernet connectivity for digital media steaming (plus Wi-Fi on the AVR-4308CI)” and you can expect some new GUI action as well.
The more-budget-friendly AVR-1508, AVR-1708, and AVR-2808 will follow in September and will share similar connectivity options as the more expensive models, just fewer of them. For example the 2808 is expected to have HDMI 1.3 support and internal Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD decoding, but the lower models will lose built-in support for decoding the newer audio soundtracks.
 you’re doing you and your loved ones a serious disservice by using them.
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To help you out, ‘cause that’s how we do, we put together this run down of eight of our favorite home-theater-in-a-box systems (HTIB, pronounced “HTIB”). Are they as good as buying individual components to handle your media needs? No, probably not. True audiophiles and film freaks will probably want to go with individual specialized components, especially if you’re trying to fill a large room with mind-blowing, bone-rattling sound. Will they pump out satisfying surround sound for the average music-and-movie enthusiast? Absolutely.</p>
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Well this was announced a few weeks back, but we have some firm specs on it now. The HD2500 is designed to be a sort of one-stop DJing utility. It provides a built-in hard drive, external memory, CD playback control, catalog backup, special effects and “more.”
It includes Denon DJ Music Manager for easy navigation of files, seamless looping, hot starts and stutter points. Users can also hook it directly to external storage devices like iPods, jump drives or laptops, or can use the internal hard drive for playing digital music. It features USB 2.0 and can completely control several Denon devices, such as the D4500 and the D4000. No word yet on pricing, but it will be available in Q4.
