Denon gets serious about Blu-ray with its latest 'reference standard' player

Having sat on its hands while the whole HD movie disc format war ran its course, Denon has finally started to get really serious about Blu-ray, in the shape of its new DVD-3800BD.

This £1600 monster of a Blu-ray deck is claimed to deliver 'Denon's best pictures to date', while also releasing 'the amazing audio ability of Blu-ray'. Plus it's claimed to be a superior DVD upscaler.

Available in silver, black or premium silver, the 3800BD is the world's first Blu-ray player to feature the acclaimed 10-bit Silicon Optix Realta chipset - cutting edge picture technology joined by Denon's own Pixel Image Correction processing and a 12-bit, 297MHz video DAC.

On the audio side, the 3800BD implements a newly developed Dynamic Discrete Surround Circuit - High Definition system to support the latest HD audio formats. This uses - and we quote - 'discrete devices for the ultimate performance in each circuit block and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoders'.

As if all this isn't already enough to have you applying for a £1600 overdraft, Denon has also designed a new drive mechanism for the 3800BD that protects the internal disc space from magnetic influences, dust and external noise via top and bottom shields.

There are loads more key 'premium' features we could tell you about, such as Denon's Suppress Vibration Hybrid disc loader and the deck's use of video and power circuits that have been separated into two independent blocks. But you've probably got the idea by now, and frankly we're not even sure we fully understand everything Denon has told us.

Basically, all you need to know is that the 3800BD is, on paper at least, the best Blu-ray player we've yet had the chance to buy in the UK. Nice.