Denon's Blu-ray Player Is Too Expensive

The company is betting on its reputation for quality, but its device uses older technology, has a cheap look, and costs too much

By Cliff Edwards

Editor's Rating:

The Good: The Good: Impressive video quality, easy setup

The Bad: The Bad: Pricey; no support for latest BD-Live interactive format

The Bottom Line: The Bottom Line: Denon's pricey Blu-ray may be poorly timed for mass adoption

Reader Reviews

The Consumer Electronics Association is predicting one of the hottest items for the holiday season will be Blu-ray players that can serve up high-definition movies for the tens of millions of HDTVs already sold worldwide. Though such players have had a slow uptake, experts say falling prices for the players should spur demand.

With Denon's DVD-1800BD Blu-ray player, though, cheap is a relative term. The "entry-level" player debuted this summer for a whopping $700 and now sells for $499—still more than double the cost of other similarly equipped devices and higher than players with more features. Denon representatives say the player is a bargain when compared with its $1,100 DVD-2500BDCI model and $2,000 DVD-3500 model.

Denon is betting its reputation for quality products will entice many customers. Even if you're not price-conscious, though, you might feel you're throwing your money away when comparing the new Denon player with other models on the market. The 1800BD supports older-generation Blu-ray technology called Profile 1.1, or BonusView. This allows for simultaneous playback of secondary audio and video tracks, which may be used for interactive audio and commentary and for picture-in-picture capability.

Skipping the Extras

Many manufacturers, including Panasonic (PC), Pioneer, Samsung, and Sony (SNE), now offer players that support Profile 2.0. Popularly known as BD-Live, these players include an Internet connection that lets users download the latest movie trailers, games, and extra content. In Disney's (DIS) recent release of Sleeping Beauty, for instance, you can play a trivia game with other disk owners anywhere around the world.

No doubt many users won't care about BD-Live, opting simply to watch the movie and any extras included on the disk, but given that Denon uses older technology, I would have expected a lower price point.

The company says additional information, such as subtitles, audio streams, camera angles, trailers, and games, can be downloaded from the Internet via a computer and stored on an SD card that the player will accept. Still, there's none of the interactivity one might expect from such an expensive player.

Cheesy Quality

For its price, I'd also expect a ritzier remote. Instead, you get a standard wand-shaped remote without any backlighting for use in darkened rooms. The matte black plastic also feels and looks cheap. For that matter, the understated matte black design of the player itself doesn't stand up to a sleek glossy black looks of rival Pioneer players or the interesting multihued look of Panasonic's DMP-BD55.

On the positive side, Denon uses the latest HD multimedia interface format, 1.3a, to output a fantastic picture with a wider color gamut to a high-definition TV. I watched Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and The Happening on a Sharp "Limited Edition" 1080p LCD TV and was happy to see both worked well, providing great clarity and detail with virtually no motion blur in fast-moving images.

The Blu-ray player also stands out with its support of high-quality Dolby True-HD and Dolby DTS-HD audio formats. You'll need a high-end receiver to decode such formats, however.

Far Too Dear

So what's the value proposition in purchasing Denon? I'm struggling to find one. Consumers for the past two years have been lukewarm to the format since it doesn't look phenomenally better than cheap, sub-$100 upconverting DVD players flooding the market. And Blu-ray disks often are sold at nearly twice the cost of a standard DVD. So the 1800BD looks prohibitively expensive to me.

For my money, I'd rather purchase two PlayStation 3 game consoles, which also include a fantastic Blu-ray player, a hard drive for storing downloaded movies, and a Web connection that enables BD-Live applications.

Edwards is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau.