The Denon DVD-2500 BT is a Blu-ray, DVD, and CD player, on the market since summer 2008 and currently selling from around 650 GBP.

• Excellent HDTV picture with 24p support.
• HD audio output as a bitstream.
• Video equalizer.
• SD-card reader.

• Poor DVD de-interlacing.
• No decoder for DTS-HD or Dolby TrueHD.
• No BD-Live.

We weren't able to give this player a meaningful overall rating, since its lack of analog outputs and separate digital-audio connections meant we couldn't carry out the full evaluation. For high-end home-theater, the Denon DVD-2500 BT thrilled us with almost perfect HDTV video-processing and crystal-clear bitstream-output of all high-definition audio formats.

Connections:

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Introduction

This Denon Blu-ray player deviates from the norm: The 2500 BT outputs audio and video exclusively via HDMI, and has no analog interfaces at all. This is typical of so-called "Transport" players, which focus solely on playing the disc and leave responsibility for decoding the signal to an external processor or AV receiver. If you already have a high-quality home-theater setup, this might be the ideal solution. Entry-level users, on the other hand, should steer clear.

The connections panel of the 2500 BT is spartan, to say the least, providing only a single HDMI output - this common for so-called "Transport" players.

Connections:
The back of the DVD-2500 BT is a wasteland. Apart from an HDMI 1.3a output, this player has no other outputs. The sophisticated, separate-circuit design claims to provide the HDMI output with an especially pure data stream. For this player, Denon developed the "Suppress Vibration Hybrid" loading mechanism, which, the company says, will guarantee stable disc rotation and improvements in read-accuracy.

"BonusView" but lack of BD-Live support:
The 2500 BT supports picture-in-picture playback ("BonusView"), in accordance with BD Profile 1.1, but sadly lacks support for BD-Live. You can still, however, use a computer to store BD-Live content on an SD memory card, and play this back alongside a Blu-ray - a nifty feature, but not all that useful in practice.

File Access and on-screen menu:
Access to MP3, WMA, and JPEG files is a little awkward, since the source selection is hidden away in the "Custom" menu. There are no problems when operating, and navigating through the on-screen menu, and the Denon displays photo slideshows faultlessly. It does not, however, provide preview thumbnails, and cannot play back AVCHD-format camcorder videos.

The white buttons on the Denon's remote control glow in the dark, minimizing mid-movie fumbling.

With DVD and Blu-ray playback, pressing the "Mode" button calls up numerous picture settings, while the "Display" button summons important system information.

In terms of audio, the Denon will only output high-definition sound as a bitstream. Since it has no HD-audio decoder of its own, it relies on the presence of a modern AV receiver.

Respectable: This fast-moving car in the Pioneer test disc "Demo Contents 2008 Summer" is a challenge for Blu-ray players. The Denon inflicts slight ghost-edges on the digits of the license plate, but the image looks otherwise correct. In almost all other test patterns, de-interlacing is excellent.

Blu-ray:
The DVD-2500 BT displays test patterns and BD-Java menus with equal accuracy - the sharpness level only falls away by a tiny 0.9 decibels (dB) at the end of the "horizontal sweep" test pattern. The sharpness control cannot compensate for this, tending instead to enhance frequencies in the mid-range.

Playback of progressive material defies criticism for both 1080/60p and 24p formats. You can, however, only use the 24p mode if the display has correctly signaled its support for the format - that is, you cannot force the player to output in 24p. The Denon converts HDTV material produced at 60 frames per second into flicker-free, progressive pictures. Only the license plates of fast-moving cars on a Pioneer demo disc showed some fringing.

DVD:

Satisfactory: The sun loungers in this sequence, from Chapter 5 of "Six Days Seven Nights", expose flaws in a player's DVD de-interlacing. And flaws they found: the Denon produced flickering stair-step effects on the edges of the chairs in all three progressive modes.

The player's DVD performance does not meet the same quality as its Blu-ray playback. There are three progressive modes, but, in all of them, the beach scene in "Six Days Seven Nights" shows flickering edges. Very fast movements can also take on some slight fringing - all in all, therefore, we can't say DVD playback is perfect. On the other hand, with a concert recorded in 1080/50i format, the Denon's de-interlacing accurately resolves each individual guitar string.

If a recording suffers picture noise or gives a poor, overall feel, the Denon's highly flexible image controls will offer relief - the controls include a gamma correction, picture-sharpness setting, and noise filter.

For the best, possible sound quality, the 2500 BT needs an AV receiver that decodes HD audio. The player itself provides no multichannel decoder for high-definition sound formats. Besides, it makes quite a lot of sense to keep the audio technology separate in the AV receiver, and therefore to use the player purely as a player. When connected to Pioneer's AV amplifier, the SC-LX 90, the Denon put in a top performance, wowing us both with dynamic tracks such as "Cars" and with stereo sound from CDs.