Marantz DV6001 upscales your DVDs to high-quality HD 1080p
Another day, and another DVD player that’s offering you close-on all the benefits of HD without foregoing your existing DVD collection or ending up being Betamax Boy by investing in the wrong next-gen HD format.
Today it’s Marantz with their DV6001 universal SACD/DVD player with 1080p upscaling, for £349.90.
Whilst that’s quite a hefty price tag for a DVD player, it’s probably several hundred cheaper than the price you’ll pay for first-release Blu-ray or HD DVD players in Europe. Worth it if you’re not ready to make the HD jump yet?
Marantz claim that their premium 216MHz/12-bit DAC with ‘Noise-Shaped Video technology’ (sorry, I don’t know what that is) and Faroudja video processing provides ‘the ultimate match for the latest HD-ready screens and projectors’. Now of course your existing DVDs are never going to look as good as a 1080p high-def disc, but they may well come close with this level of technology built-in – more so than your thirty-quid standard-def player, anyway. It’ll upscale to the other formats (720p, 1080i) also, and will also play CDs at top quality with a low jitter 24-bit/192kHz audio DAC.
There’s an HDMI 1.1 connection for your HDTV or projector, and the case design features thick metal front panel, double layer bottom plate and shock-absorbing feet, to help minimise internal vibration and mechanically induced jitter.
Whether it’s worth investing in at this transitional stage is another matter. Next-gen players should also play existing DVDs, though they may not do as good a job on upscaling them as playing native HD discs. You might still end up with both players if you’ve the cash and an extensive DVD library.
Marantz website
