Julie: Hi, I'm Julie.

Amanda: And I'm Amanda.

Julie: And we're here in the Crutchfield studio with Denon's DVD-1800BD Blu-ray Disc™ player.

Amanda: Right, now, this player has a lot of the features you just expect from a good standard Blu-ray player these days. Of course it can play 1080p video and pass that to your TV over HDMI. It also supports Bonus View, which is a feature on some Blu-ray Discs, where you can watch director's commentary in a little window while you watch the actual movie.

Julie: Right, you don't have to just hear it.

Amanda: Exactly, you can see it. So, it's pretty cool.

Julie: Yep. But what we really wanted to talk about today is what makes the DVD-1800BD different from other Blu-ray Disc players. And a big part of that is Denon's dedication to quality.

Amanda: Definitely.

Julie: And one thing that music fans are really going to appreciate is that there's a major dedication to audio quality from this player. I actually talked to Denon about this and they mentioned that there were special internal capacitors for better audio, stuff like that.

Amanda: Yeah. They also give you really high-quality Burr-Brown digital-to-analog converters. What that means is, if you have this player connected to your receiver via a stereo analog audio connection, then those converters are going to take the digital sound from the CD and convert it to analog in a really high-quality way, giving you that really warm, open sound that you're used to from maybe your previous CD player.

Julie: Yeah, and I think a lot of Blu-ray Disc players don't dedicate themselves to reproducing stereo analog sound that way, because they're thinking of themselves as primarily movie machines, so it's really nice to see that here.

Amanda: Yeah, absolutely. And, in that same vein, the '1800 gives you a Pure Direct Mode. What that does is turn off the circuitry that handles the display here, on the front panel. It also turns off the video circuitry and just throws all of its efforts at producing really high-quality music.

Julie: Yep. And I actually have Pure Direct mode on my components at home, and I think you do too, and we're here to tell you that you don't have to have one of those super-fancy twenty-thousand dollar speaker systems to hear a difference when you're using Pure Direct Mode.

Amanda: Yeah, that's definitely true. And one last audio tidbit — this isn't a particularly high-end feature, but it's nice to see because not every player can do this &mdash this player can handle MPS and WMA CDs that you burn at home yourself, and that's nice if you're used to listening to those. You can still listen to those with this player.

Julie: Yeah, not every player supports that. So it's really great to see it in this one.

Amanda: Absolutely.

Julie: Now, even though it's got all those features that are going to make music fans happy, it does still deliver a really really great video signal. It's got a shielded drive, and in fact the entire inside is set up to avoid interference with your video signal. And that's important because with today's HDTVs, when you get interference in a video signal, that shows up as noise on the television. And you can really see it — those TVs are so precise that you're not going to be able to just gloss over it.

Amanda: Yeah, very very true.

Julie: So, getting a clean signal out of this player is crucial for a good experience.

Amanda: Absolutely. And one last thing I wanted to touch on: you get something with this called HDMI-CEC control. And what that means is, if you connect this Denon player to a compatible Denon receiver via an HDMI cable, you can actually control both of them with just one remote.

Julie: That's very useful.

Amanda: Yeah, so it's great if you want to integrate this into an existing Denon system. Very convenient.

Julie: So to sum up, the DVD-1800 is going to be a very solid Blu-ray Disc player. But what I think people are really going to like about it, is that it serves as a useful, all-in-one disc player. You don't have to add a Blu-ray Disc player, but still keep a CD or DVD player around to get good music out of your CDs.

Amanda: Yep, definitely. So if you want to learn more, just go to crutchfield.com/DenonDVD1800.

Julie: That's right. And if you have questions, you can always call 1-800-555-9408.