Marantz DV7600

I bought the Marantz DV7600 to replace a defunct Pioneer laserdisc player that I'd picked up in Japan on my travels many moons ago.

Video

The player upscales standard DVD films to the 1080i format (not quite the whole 1080p hog). The video performance is astonishing although I must admit that I don't have much to compare it with. The upscaled video is not quite as good as the picture on Sky HD but is significantly better than the standard DVD quality. The player even upscales disks where the video has been compressed to fit on the disk: just occasionally a bit of 'blocking' but emininently watchable nevertheless.

The player provides Tru-Surround (which gives pseudo surround sound) for people (like me) who play film audio through their two channel audio set up.

Audio

This is where the player comes into it's own. The audio performance is incredible to my ears (I play the audio through an antequated Marantz PM80 amplifier and B&W Matrix 2S2 speakers). I had thought that I would need to buy a bespoke CD player for audio CD's: however, the DV7600 blows the socks off my old Pioneer laserdisc (which I thought was respectable with it's 1-bit DAC) and I believe it may not be necessary now.

The DV7600 will play MP3's recorded onto writeable CD's (but not those on DVD's strangely enough) although lower bitrates do't do the system justice. The DV7600 does not handle variable bit rate MP3's either.

If I have one criticism of the player it is that there is a delay of a second or so when you press a button on the remote control. This doesn't bother me now I'm used to it but those more testosterone challenged out there may prefer something that reacts a little quicker.

The player can still be sourced at the time of writing for £250 - £300 and this looks good value to me for anyone who listens to audio CD's as well as watching conventional DVD's (the player ws £700 - £800 when first released). Of course, Blu-Ray changes the landscape a little, but I've decided to stick to standard video through the DV7600's upscaler in the short to medium term.