Thread: Denon DBP-2010CI Review

Will try this again.

Picked this player up a few weeks ago. It might remain a permanent piece in my system. It is a fully capable 2.0 player with both internal decoding and bitstreaming. It has the ABT VRS chipset.

Aesthetics:

It is a very sturdy player compared to most of the other players out there, although it is not the "tank" that the 3800 is.

Set up:

Set up was a breeze with this player. It is running through a Lexicon MC12HD to a JVC DLA-HD750BU. It has two setup menus: easy and advanced. I chose advanced. Video is set to 1080p/24. Audio is set to HD Audio/LPCM. Next hooked up the internet connection. It detected it immediately and downloaded a new version of the software. Next calibrated the player to the display. It has a lot of video controls as compared to the Samsung. You can adjust the contrast, brightness, sharpness, gamma correction, color, and black level.

Playback:

Power on time for the unit is around 20 seconds. Load time varies with discs, but Knowing loaded in about 50 seconds (of course a ton of previews). Video was absolutely flawless. Colors were rich and vibrant (nothing artificial looking) and no noise. Sound was stunning and blew away the Samsung and seemed noticably better than the Panasonic. Denon sure did a great job on the audio side.

Next I put in Star Wars: Episode 2 because there is a lot of fast moving objects and bright colors. There were absolutely no jaggies and colors were extremely rich. This player totally blows the Samsung 3600 out of the water at upconversion and is richer/crisper than the Panasonic (which is a good upconverter). This player also has a source direct mode to allow outside sources to apply video adjustments. I saw no difference in letting the player upscale versus the projector. One problem I am having is scaling SD DVD to 1080p/24. I am researching this issue and will update later.

Audio:

Here's the fun part of this player. It has a separate audio stage for 2 channel audio. Put in a CD and it sounded remarkable. It was like listening to te music rather than the system. A definite plus here especially since I have heard that Oppo has had some issues with CD audio (don't know whether or not they were solved).

Overall Impressions:

This is an outstanding player and Denon definitely pays attention to details where it matters. Denon doesn't care about the "frills" like Netflix streaming, etc.

Pros:

Easy User Interface
Audio and Video setting options
BD Video
SDDVD upscaling
Internal audio decoding
Separate 2 channel stage for CD audio
Easy internet hookup
Plays most any format

Cons:

$699 MSRP
No WiFi connection
No streaming
HDMI Resolution Button is on the player
1080p/24 unavailable for SDDVD upscaling (?)
No DVD-A or SACD playback

Product Info:


http://usa.denon.com/DBP-2010CI_Lit609.pdf

S~

Thanks for the review, Stuck thread

Cool! Thanks for the review!

Man, sounds great. Im curious about the audio. Technically, if you bitstream audio, the AQ should only be determined by your rcvr and not the player, correct?

Looks like a great player, but for the price Id need more improvement than pcm audio and upconversion.(have only watched a couple of dvd's in the last year)

Originally Posted by elwaylite

Man, sounds great. Im curious about the audio. Technically, if you bitstream audio, the AQ should only be determined by your rcvr and not the player, correct?

Looks like a great player, but for the price Id need more improvement than pcm audio and upconversion.(have only watched a couple of dvd's in the last year)

True, it shouldn't. I have noticed a difference in PQ with the 2010 over my other players even on BD. Seems even more vivid. The separate two channel stage is awesome, also. I prefer it over sending it out over HDMI.

S~