Denon DVD 2500BT, What does it all mean

[admin_exported]

I am starting to look for a Blu Ray player to match up with my Denon 4308 AMP/Receiver but am very confused with the talk of Blu Ray transport. What is the difference (in simple terms) between this and a normal Blu Ray that would work with my amp and have full HD sound capabilities. Reading about the Denon 2500BT it seems to fall short on some of the specification ie What is profile 1.1 and could this be upgraded with firmware. If the 2500bt is so good but does not have certain connections and is aimed at the home cinema enthusiast why would you buy the Denon 3800BD.

 

[Andrew Everard]

The transport has no audio output section, so can't be used into an older amplifier without HDMI inputs - ie there are no multichannel analogue outputs.

Neither does it have conventional digital outputs from CD, nor any analogue video outputs.

In fact, there's just an HDMI socket.

The 3800 has a full set of digital and analogue outputs for both audio and video.

 

[Anonymous]

So in short i have a Denon 4308 amp and i will be able to get full HD sound aswell as superb picture quality. Do i really need any of the other connections? or when would i need them?.

 

[Andrew Everard]

You'd only need them if you wanted to connect to other electronics requiring analogue audio or video inputs.

With your receiver you'll be fine.

FYI here's the back of the 2500BT

and here's the back of the 3800BD

 

[Anonymous]

What is profile 1.1? is it important and is it something that could be updated later if Denon released an update.

 

[pete321]

Profile 2.0 allows you to download additional special features content from the internet for those blu-ray movies with it included in their special features. Obviously your player would also need to be able to connect to the internet for this added extra.

The Denon 2500BT doesn't have this option with it being only profile 1.1. Personally it doesn't bother me as I never pay much interest in the additional features anyway.

 

[Anonymous]

Pete,

I notice you have the Denon 2500BT, what do you think of it? I am also considering a media centre but do you think this would play Blu Ray with the same quality.

 

[pete321]

mark8par:

Pete,

I notice you have the Denon 2500BT, what do you think of it? I am also considering a media centre but do you think this would play Blu Ray with the same quality.

I just replaced my Sony BDP-S350 with the Denon and whilst there is a noticeable improvement, I wouldn't say in my opinion it justified the extra cash given the Sony is £160 and Denon £600. The biggest improvement I've noticed with the Denon playing blu-rays is the 3 dimensionality of the picture. The Denon beats the Sony hands down at upscaling DVD's to 1080p, although that wasn't an issue really for me because I used to use my Onkyo 905 amp to upscale DVD's via my Sony player.

I have to say I'm in a minority, most people rave about the Denon, it is a very well built player, but in my opinion by comparisson to what's on offer from the Sony BDP-S350, it should sell for about £350.

I used to have a home built Media PC with a Blu-Ray/HDDVD drive, but I gave it up for a number of reasons.

[*]Noise, unless you invest in water cooling fans are too noisy.
[*]HD playback was good through an nVidia 8600GTS silent graphics card, but quite a long way off the standalone players I've had since.
[*]Playback software required constant updates and didn't always work.
[*]There was no HD Audio at the time I was using it, I know Auzentech were developing something, but I'm not sure if it's up and running yet.

I've recently bought a TViX HD M6500a, but HD playback is not very good albeit that it does bitstream HD audio via HDMI. I tend to just use it for FLAC music now. The idea of a Media Centre PC is a good one having everything together on one machine, but I don't think you can get the quality of standalone machines.