What do you think of the Denon DVD-3800?

I agree about the chroma bug issue. I'm a fan of Denon and the Chroma Upsampling glitch is something that they SPECIFICALLY had to address after the debut of the DVD2800. Denon even went so far as to SPECIFICALLY mention the resolution of this problem on the Denon website. If they went with a less than perfect de-interlacing solution, but was PERFECT in every other aspect of performance, it might have been less of a PR debacle for Denon. The 9000, absent the chroma upsampling error + multi channel SACD via its analog outputs (not their DL) would have turned some heads and would have enticed many people to seriously consider it as the player to beat. Unfortunately, its not packaged that way and it may just end up being relegated as a solid DVD-A player and CD transport/player.


I honestly think that Denon should have spent a little bit more time in R&D to make sure that this issue was resolved. Introduction of the 5803 and 5800 upgrade was good. In fact the upgrade boards were delayed, yet, Denon obviously didn't feel the need to delay the 3800 and 9000- very uncharacteristic of them.

elbert

Well Craig, Denon did not know for sure if ESS was going to be able to fix the chroma bug, yet went ahead and told everyone at the CES show that the players would be chroma bug free, posted on their website that the players would be chroma bug free, and then said they couldn't fix it in time. The posts by DenonJeff said Denon engineers were working on it but decided not to delay them any further, so trying to save face for Denon is somewhat pointless. A lot of people spent a lot of time discussing these players as if they were the holy grail, yet Denon did not deliver on what they promised on either the 3800 or the 9000. This is not to say that they won't be good players, as they may well be. I cannot truly say as my opinion of the 2800 was that it was disappointing when compared to the RP91 or the 5700.


DBNyack,

Their are other players that do not have the chroma bug besides the Panasonic, such as the Kenwood 5700. They source their MPEG decoders from somewhere also.


There is no reason to blindly follow and assume that all of one companies products are good. These Denon players have been subject to an enormous amount of hype on this and HTF due to the promises made. Once again, they may well turn out to be excellent players, and I have not yet seen them, but there are others that are probably as worthy of our attention.

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The Kenwoods are using the Panasonic Mpeg2 decoder. For these current gen Denon players, I'm sure the only other option was probably to use the Mediamatics, which also meant they wouldn't be able to use the Si504 chip.


I don't want to justify the existence of the error in the players, as I too wished it wasn't present. However, I don't think the problem can be resolved as easily as you and many others think it could.


Also, as I remember, I thought the ESS chroma bug issue followed Craig's story - in which Denon was told by ESS that the new chips would be chroma bug free, but at the last minute, Denon was informed by ESS that they weren't able to completely fix it. However, according to DenonJeff, they are still working on it in hopes to have it resolved in the near future. I'm keeping my fingers crossed in hopes that they do.


I'm also in favor of stopping the Denon bashing too. I'd be surprised if their PR reps allow Jeff to even represent them on this forum now with threads that have been going on over this chroma bug in the new players. If this isn't so already, I hope we don't lose a valuable source

I'm a fan of Denon and instead of bashing them, I do believe that I, and other Denon consumers should be allowed to express their disappointment in these players, even w/o seeing them. The reason being is the fact that the 3800 and 9000 do exhibit the chroma upsampling bug, which has been verified by both Jeff Talmadge and other forum members. Denon was well aware that the much anticipated 2800 fell short on overall video quality due to the huge impact that the chroma bug made on its overall video presentation. Simply tackling the deinterlacing aspect of performance wasn't enough and Denon LEARNED from these forums and their firmware updates on the 2800 that consumers will be keying in on the chroma upsampling error on the next generation of Denon dvd players and so they SPECIFICALLY Targeted their marketing on this issue as formally stated on the Denon website. Hence, we the HT enthusiasts and others that were among the first to find out about the 2800's chroma problems should be entitled to express disappointment with Denon on a KNOWINGLY failed attempt to bring their player's to the next level and eliminating the MAJOR FLAW that plagued their last model.

Elbert