Denon DVD-3800 DVD-Video/Audio Player
September 2002
Everything but the kitchen sink (and SACD)
by Mark Fleischmann
If the United Nations ever needs a DVD player to show Harry Potter movies to the General Assembly, I'd recommend the Denon DVD-3800—its menus can be read in 125 different languages. Okay, its obvious appeal to Catalan, Moldavian and Samoan speakers may not be what interests you, but there are plenty of attractions here for both videophiles and audiophiles.
One of those features is the Silicon Image/DVDO SiI504 video-processing chip. This is the same decoding engine found in Denon's top-of-the-line DVD-9000, which sells for $3,500, versus the 3800's relatively accessible price tag of $1,199 (possibly less than a grand if you shop around). A high-end, deinterlacing chip like the SiI504 not only provides progressive-scan output for a digital video display, but also does it well, which is an entirely different matter. By gulping up two full frames of video data at a time (that's a lot), SiI504 generates pretty good reconstructions of film frames, even if the split-frames, known as fields, are inaccurately flagged. It can also decode mixed film and video content. The end result for the human eye is a reduction in jaggies, blurring and other video artifacts that distract from a good movie's thrills and chills.
The 3800 is also a DVD-Audio player that plays the delectable lossless, high-resolution disc releases available in that format. The 3800 counts HDCD decoding as another talent, which provides better-than-CD-quality sound with thousands of HDCD releases, many of which are quietly sitting on your shelves at this moment, whether you're aware of their hidden potential or not. The DVD-3800 will also read your CD-R and CD-RW discs (you godless bootlegger, you), MP3 files, Kodak PictureCDs and even JPEGs. The only thing it can't do, regrettably, is play discs in SACD, DVD-Audio's rival format.
This player is built like a little tank. Though it may look like any other black box, it weighs 20 lbs., and there's a reason for that. Two smaller boxes are inside the enclosure, with each of those boxes containing five different blocks of circuitry. That's almost as good as the three-box, six-block circuit layout of the $3,500 deck. Of course, the benefit of physically separating circuits is to reduce interference, and impart a seemingly miraculous level of noiselessness to both video and audio. Slicker audiophiles may take the opportunity to switch off the video circuits for purer sound quality.
The 3800 provides a variety of picture adjustments that may duplicate those found in a good DTV. If your display is missing any adjustments for screen shape or picture quality, they're probably available somewhere in this DVD player's menus. The duplicated controls are also an aid to convenience. For instance, any display can adjust black level, but using this DVD player's two-step black-level adjustment makes it easy to switch from daytime to nighttime viewing without affecting your display's carefully tweaked (I should hope) settings. Denon even provides picture memories so you can summon up to five different groups of preferred settings.
by Mark Fleischmann
If the United Nations ever needs a DVD player to show Harry Potter movies to the General Assembly, I'd recommend the Denon DVD-3800—its menus can be read in 125 different languages. Okay, its obvious appeal to Catalan, Moldavian and Samoan speakers may not be what interests you, but there are plenty of attractions here for both videophiles and audiophiles.
One of those features is the Silicon Image/DVDO SiI504 video-processing chip. This is the same decoding engine found in Denon's top-of-the-line DVD-9000, which sells for $3,500, versus the 3800's relatively accessible price tag of $1,199 (possibly less than a grand if you shop around). A high-end, deinterlacing chip like the SiI504 not only provides progressive-scan output for a digital video display, but also does it well, which is an entirely different matter. By gulping up two full frames of video data at a time (that's a lot), SiI504 generates pretty good reconstructions of film frames, even if the split-frames, known as fields, are inaccurately flagged. It can also decode mixed film and video content. The end result for the human eye is a reduction in jaggies, blurring and other video artifacts that distract from a good movie's thrills and chills.
The 3800 is also a DVD-Audio player that plays the delectable lossless, high-resolution disc releases available in that format. The 3800 counts HDCD decoding as another talent, which provides better-than-CD-quality sound with thousands of HDCD releases, many of which are quietly sitting on your shelves at this moment, whether you're aware of their hidden potential or not. The DVD-3800 will also read your CD-R and CD-RW discs (you godless bootlegger, you), MP3 files, Kodak PictureCDs and even JPEGs. The only thing it can't do, regrettably, is play discs in SACD, DVD-Audio's rival format.
This player is built like a little tank. Though it may look like any other black box, it weighs 20 lbs., and there's a reason for that. Two smaller boxes are inside the enclosure, with each of those boxes containing five different blocks of circuitry. That's almost as good as the three-box, six-block circuit layout of the $3,500 deck. Of course, the benefit of physically separating circuits is to reduce interference, and impart a seemingly miraculous level of noiselessness to both video and audio. Slicker audiophiles may take the opportunity to switch off the video circuits for purer sound quality.
The 3800 provides a variety of picture adjustments that may duplicate those found in a good DTV. If your display is missing any adjustments for screen shape or picture quality, they're probably available somewhere in this DVD player's menus. The duplicated controls are also an aid to convenience. For instance, any display can adjust black level, but using this DVD player's two-step black-level adjustment makes it easy to switch from daytime to nighttime viewing without affecting your display's carefully tweaked (I should hope) settings. Denon even provides picture memories so you can summon up to five different groups of preferred settings.
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