Merry Christmas everyone!
Unwrapped my pressie this morning, a Marantz UD5005. Very pleased with it so far. Nice solid case, although a bit more weight to it would have been nice, however it looks very classy. Since I sold my Oppo a few months ago, I've been using a Sony 370 downstairs, these are my initial thoughts on what the £370 paid for the UD5005 gets you compared to the £99 I paid for the Sony. In terms of what I've seen picture wise so far, same sharpness that the Sony brings with 1080p, but much better black levels, plus the colour seems more natural whereas the Sony could appear slightly over saturated at times. I can confirm it plays MKV files as does the Sony. So far I've tried some 576i DVD's which I converted to 576i MKV for storage on a hard drive. The SD picture was similar to the Sony, but with a more natural clolour tone and deeper blacks. The internal upscaling is good, but not a match for the Anchor Bay chip in my Z7, so it'll be used in Source Direct mode. Sound is a big leap forward over the Sony. Whilst the 370 is articulate, the UD5005 brings much greater depth and body to the party as well as keeping the articulate top end. This is not just with movies, SACD's have much greater depth to them, making the Sony sound thin by comparison. Just goes to show that it's not all about 1's & 0's via HDMI, the improvement in sound isn't subtle! Tried a couple of DVD-A's as well, they sound just as impressive.
Looking forward to some more viewing & listening over the holiday & it getting better still with burn in time.
Unwrapped my pressie this morning, a Marantz UD5005. Very pleased with it so far. Nice solid case, although a bit more weight to it would have been nice, however it looks very classy. Since I sold my Oppo a few months ago, I've been using a Sony 370 downstairs, these are my initial thoughts on what the £370 paid for the UD5005 gets you compared to the £99 I paid for the Sony. In terms of what I've seen picture wise so far, same sharpness that the Sony brings with 1080p, but much better black levels, plus the colour seems more natural whereas the Sony could appear slightly over saturated at times. I can confirm it plays MKV files as does the Sony. So far I've tried some 576i DVD's which I converted to 576i MKV for storage on a hard drive. The SD picture was similar to the Sony, but with a more natural clolour tone and deeper blacks. The internal upscaling is good, but not a match for the Anchor Bay chip in my Z7, so it'll be used in Source Direct mode. Sound is a big leap forward over the Sony. Whilst the 370 is articulate, the UD5005 brings much greater depth and body to the party as well as keeping the articulate top end. This is not just with movies, SACD's have much greater depth to them, making the Sony sound thin by comparison. Just goes to show that it's not all about 1's & 0's via HDMI, the improvement in sound isn't subtle! Tried a couple of DVD-A's as well, they sound just as impressive.
Looking forward to some more viewing & listening over the holiday & it getting better still with burn in time.