Denon 5910ci and Sony XA9000ES

I just went ahead and bought the Denon. (at $1,200. would you refuse?)
That was when Blu puke and H-DOG DVD where in the into phase and everyone else was sitting on the fence instead of buying hi-end DVD. So I got mine NEW from a dealer for a genuine steal price.
State of the art is just that... go for the one that rings your personal bells..
(I wanted the one to go with the Denon-Link in my 4807 receiver...Oh, yeah, that was 1/2 price too... as a demo...)
As you can tell I think BluRay and HD DVD are a con game to soak us all one more time... when really they are not much better.. (sort of what S-VHS was to VHS...)

I own aDenon 5900 and the 3910 Denon units and I also owned the Sony.
I sold the Sony and had my 3910 modified by APL.

The Sony played SACD's well but was terrible at regular Cd's with an extremly flat presentation.

Elizabeth,
Get some new glasses!
I have been watching 480p for several years.
HD smokes 480p. Provided the transfer is good.

Tim

Hey Elizabeth, you sound pleased with your purchase. Any chance you auditioned the XA9000ES?
Flemke, I'm with you.
Ozzy, any chance your system was not playing in correct phase? Flat presentation is one of the giveaways. I appreciate your response but there's been too much good said by too many people for me to accept it sounds terrible; but everything is relative so I'm not dissing your opinion at all.

"provided the transfer is good"
Provided the transfer is good on a 480p disc it is pretty damn fine.
Now when you expect all those old movies to be 'remastered' for bluhoo or Hd-d Please feel free to hold your breath.
I'ts gonna be a looooooooooooong wait.
My guess is most of the usual movies will just be done 'as is' from the DVD mastering. So when you screw your eyes out watching for that hi-res that isn't there, I'll still be happy with my upconverted 480p.

11-21-07: Elizabeth
"provided the transfer is good"
Provided the transfer is good on a 480p disc it is pretty damn fine.
Now when you expect all those old movies to be 'remastered' for bluhoo or Hd-d Please feel free to hold your breath.
I'ts gonna be a looooooooooooong wait.

I saw Spartacus in HD DVD. It was so sharp the resolution was limited only by the film grain itself.

I also have the HD DVD of Casablanca. It is downright stunning, better than I've seen it in the old "art" movie houses that thrived in the '70s and '80s.

I have many good std-def DVDs with excellent digital transfers. The Harry Potter series and Lord of the Rings trilogy come to mind. But they cannot TOUCH the resolution of the HD DVDs I've watched, and the way HD DVD draws me into the story action.

I have what I consider a decent display, but by no means the highest rez or state of the art. It's a 55" LCD RP Hitachi in 720p/1080i, but it's enough that when I watch a good 480p excellently upconverted by my Toshiba HD-D2 via HDMI, I still ain't fooling myself that I'm watching HD.

There are already HD DVD releases of some of my favorite old westerns, including The Cowboys (with John Wayne) and Peckinpah's Wild Bunch. You can bet these are NOT 480p transfers.

Universal in particular seems to be on a mission from God to make Hi-Def digital transfers of their film library. So much so that my cable package includes channel 660, UHD (Universal HD). Many of the films that show up on that channel have been made into HD DVDs, and the other films, since the hi-def digital transfer has already been made, will probably show up on HD DVD soon.

I am not going to buy everything new that comes out on HD.
Some titles I will re-purchase. Casablanca is one that I did. Stunning it is.

Tim

11-22-07: Flemke
I am not going to buy everything new that comes out on HD.
Some titles I will re-purchase. Casablanca is one that I did. Stunning it is.

I own 8 HD DVDs, but I didn't buy any of them. Three were gifts, and the other five were the freebies I got for buying a Toshiba and sending in the form to claim five free HD DVDs within the specified time frame. Casablanca was one of those. When I previewed it to see what it looked like, I had to call my wife into the room. The image quality of Casablanca blew her away.

For the rest of it, I set my Netflix profile to prefer HD DVD when available for a title in the queue.

On Dec. 11, Warner is releasing a 5-title HD DVD set of the Harry Potter movies so far. I smell a Christmas present. :)

Very interesting about the HD DVD. Sounds exciting. I'm still very interested to hear comparisons of the Denon 5910 versus Sony XA9000ES for Redbook Cd playback. I'm assuming both will satisfy for the other formats. I'll still be using my Toshiba HD ready TV with the old progressive scan 3 wire connection component video system for at least a couple of years and the Toshiba SD9200 DVD player seems to look ok for us. Would the new Benchmark DAC 1 from the SD9200 provide sound to equal the 5910 or XA9000Es?