The Denon DVD-A1 UD is a Blu-ray player released in summer 2009, and it’s one of the best we’ve ever tested. The device currently sells for around 4,500 GBP online.

Florian Friedrich, tested on December 7, 2009

Gorgeous design and top build-quality.
Outstanding picture and sound (for both Blu-ray and DVD).
Excellent range of features.
Optimum hardware for audio and video optimization.

Extremely long loading times, as well as delays during navigation.
Needs other Denon devices in order to provide its best sound.
Not exactly cheap.

Does it get any better than this? Actually, no! Denon’s new top player is the best of the best, providing top-quality video and audio transmission. But that’s not all; the player also offers great build quality, a superb feature set, and a handy video equalizer. The (extremely!) long disc-loading time disappoints slightly, but we’ll admit to being quite taken with the DVD-A1 UD.

Foreword

We don’t normally write a foreword for players, but we just have to make an exception for the Denon DVD-A1 UD — what an amazing piece of work! It’s no easy task to build a player that rises above the masses of devices on the market: The founders of the Blu-ray Disc Association have crammed so many licenses and patents into the format that little technical scope remains for improvements. And even luxury manufacturers such as Denon are bound the guidelines — whether they like them or not. Producing small but effective improvements in the audio and video requires a great deal of effort. But Denon hasn’t shirked away from the work involved in producing a new top player — and it’s that work that explains the phenomenal price tag.

Additional signal processing, for example, provides a noticeable improvement in picture and sound quality. What’s more, no other player can boast such a luxurious list of features, as well as playback of high-bitrate formats — SA-CD and DVD-Audio (see box below) — that aren’t supported on competing models. The Denon will therefore also appeal to people that, until now, struggled to make their peace with CD sound from Blu-ray players. The presence of analogue XLR audio outputs, for example, makes it clear that Denon has invested a lot of effort in the DVD-A1 UD’s analogue sound quality — which is therefore superb.

Multimedia

The Denon DVD-A1 UD’s network connection only works for BD-Live and firmware updates — and not for YouTube videos or other online multimedia content. But it’s easy to live with this small limitation when you bear in mind the luxurious overall package.

A flap on the unit’s front hides a slot for SD (and SDHC) memory cards. From such cards, you can play back photos, videos, and music directly on the Blu-ray player. The “Compressed Audio Restorer”, which we’ve already seen in other recent Denon receivers, turns out to be a handy extra. It’s a kind of audio-enhancer for strongly compressed MP3, but one that actually works: The technology manages, for example, to improve the quality of audio books significantly. But don’t expect miracles with music that’s too strongly compressed — here, there’s little difference between the original and the ‘enhanced’ version. AVCHD videos from camcorders, on the other hand, are a pleasure to watch, and bring home-made HD to the living room.

Connections and Other Features

Excellently equipped: The Denon’s healthy connectivity sets the player apart from the masses — it includes two HDMI outputs and a “Denon Link”.

In order to dish out its full audio potential, the Denon brings along a few special connections. Not even an HDMI connection to the AV receiver is enough to deliver the player’s best results — but, as we’re starting to see, everything is slightly different on this player. The best type of audio output is the Denon Link (see box below), followed by the symmetrical stereo analogue output and the 7.1-channel cinch connection.

So, what about the picture? As you’d expect of a high-quality Blu-ray player, the DVD-A1 UD also provides analogue video connections: composite, S-Video, and YUV. The Japanese manufacturer has even given these outputs their own video processor, the ABT 2010. Nevertheless, we — obviously — recommend using the best type of connection, which in this case is HDMI. Of course, the Denon designers are aware of this, and have fitted the player with two HDMI outputs — a second HDMI is still rare in modern Blu-ray players. Both outputs carry the same signal in the automatic mode, but can be set to “AV P. Direct”, in which HDMI 1 carries the video signal to the display device and HDMI 2 carries the audio signal to the receiver. It’s not possible, however, to set different resolutions for the two outputs.

Other connections include an RS-232 interface and two mini-jack sockets; the mini-jacks allow you to connect an external IR receiver so that you can control the player without needing to be in line of sight. The wealth of connectivity ensures this Denon’s compatibility with all AV receivers and power amps, since the player can also supply older devices with analogue signals.

Operation

The large remote control has backlit buttons for easy operation in the dark, home-cinema atmosphere.

Once again, a round of applause: Without a doubt, the A1 is the most informative player we’ve ever got our hands on — but also the slowest (OK, a small ‘boo’ here). Loading the Blu-ray “Iron Man”, for example, takes an unbelievable two and a half minutes. And that’s not just when you first put in the disc — it’s every, single time! Someone really needs to tell Denon’s developers that this is simply way too long. The user shouldn’t have time to make a cup of tea and a slice of toast before the first picture appears on the screen. For comparison: most current Blu-ray players can do this in less than 60 seconds — and we even find that way too slow. Navigation times in the film and setup menus are also anything but snappy. We can only hope that the A1 will speed up a little when new firmware updates become available.

OK, that’s enough grumbling. The numerous setup and information options quickly brighten the spirit — they’re so good, in fact, that the competition can’t really compete. The Japanese developers have fitted their showpiece player with an almost completely configurable video processor; this, along with the many direct buttons on the sizeable remote control, will make the player particularly attractive to home-cinema experts. For example: pressing just one button will switch the resolution, or display an info menu, or dim the display — and so on! We also love the multichannel decoder and the plentiful setup options for the HDMI outputs — the developers have really thought of everything!

Picture Quality

Blu-ray:
To put it simply: The Denon’s Blu-ray playback is perfect! But you don’t need to pay 4,500 pounds for accurate Blu-ray playback. After all, many of our player reviews have shown that this is also possible with competing models that cost as little as 200 or 300 pounds. We would have been very surprised if the Denon had shown errors in this aspect of its performance.

The Denon exhibits a perfect frequency response via HDMI.

The digital levels for colours and brightness levels are perfect, as is the differentiation of the finest details. And the Denon even manages to decode blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white regions correctly (in RGB or the original YCrCb format) for both SDTV and HDTV signals. On top of this comes excellent de-interlacing of 1080i material at 60 hertz. The Denon is the first Blu-ray player ever to score full marks in our laboratory testing — respect!

DVD:
As we’ve learnt with the huge number of players we’ve tested, a great Blu-ray player isn’t always automatically also a great DVD player. In fact, BD players commonly falter with DVDs — especially if the disc has no progressive flag. But you needn’t worry with the Denon — here, again, the A1 does its 4,500-pound price tag proud.

Up-scaling DVDs to 1080p is the biggest challenge facing any video processor, since it must recognize whether the signal is originally video- or film-based and then process the picture in the most attractive way possible — ideally without losing any of the signal’s original information. We put the Denon through its paces using a whole range of tricky test patterns and film scenes. So how did the A1 fare? Perfectly: Every — and we mean every — test pattern played back with no errors at all, in absolutely impeccable quality. If necessary, you can then use the numerous picture controls — gamma, sharpness, or noise reduction, for example — to pep up the picture even further. But the Denon’s output is of such high quality that it sometimes even exposes the limits and errors of the connected display device. In any case, any user-adjustments can be stored in one of several memory locations — this practical feature also allows you to make before/after comparisons.

If you leave the picture controls as they are (in the standard settings), the player’s digital levels match those of the source signal so precisely that playing back a test disc is like running a video generator. The Denon differentiates colours and greyscales as naturally as the format permits — this is what perfect DVD playback looks like!

Sound Quality

You can adjust the Denon to perfectly suit your individual requirements — for example, this menu lets you set the distance between the speakers and the listening position.

By now, this almost seems like stating the obvious: The DVD-A1 UD also delivers outstanding sound — for both films and music. This works especially well with the Denon Link (see box below), but this connection only works with expensive Denon receivers. During Blu-ray playback, the Denon Link is demoted to simply controlling the timing (as a so-called “Clock Control”). The receiver or pre-amp transmits a reference timing signal, via the Denon Link, that tells the player precisely when to send each individual piece of digital information. The transmission itself takes place via HDMI.

In the test lab, we tried out the player with “Iron Man” on Blu-ray. In the opening scene, bombs whoosh past the listeners’ ears, and explosions seem to hit you right in the pit of your stomach — it’s amazing! We found similar results with “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”: As Harry whizzes past on his broom, chased by a fierce dragon, the walls literally shake. Film soundtracks don’t even come close to stretching this player — but what’s it like with music?

First, let’s have the simple answer: Multichannel music sounds absolutely superb on the A1. We initially examined SA-CD playback via Denon Link — even within the first few bars, the combination of the A1 with Denon’s AVP-A1 HD receiver and POA-A1 HD amplifier totally swept us off our feet. Instruments sound vivid and strong, as if an entire orchestra is playing in front of you. Women’s voices in jazz pieces glisten from the speakers with precision, but manage not to water down the depth and roominess of the piano accompaniment.

With Dolby TrueHD from a Blu-ray, the flawless impression continues, although we have to say that pure HDMI sound is always slightly inferior to that via Denon Link. Compressed audio from a DVD and stereo music from CDs both sound fantastic — the quality of the analogue outputs can definitely compete with that of the Denon Link and HDMI connections. We just can’t say enough positive things about this one — we’ve finally found the perfect player!