May 11 - 4:15pm EDT   Denon's American branch this afternoon bowed its core lineup for 2009 and headlined it with both Blu-ray players as well as network-aware iPod docks. The DBP-2010CI and DBP-1610CI both bring Blu-ray Profile 2.0 support for Internet-based special features and will play both AVC (H.264) and DivX video in HD. The higher-end 2010CI touts a higher-grade Anchor Bay digital imaging processor and a serial port for home automation. Both ship in July with the 1610CI costing $499 and the 2010CI asking a premium at $699. [full story]

January 30 - 4:40pm EST   Denon on Friday announced it will delay the release of its DVD-A1UD Blu-ray player by about two months, without giving any reasons for the delay. The company now claims the reader is now due out late in March as production is behind the original schedule. Denon's flagship is billed as the first universal disc player for its ability to play back Blu-ray, DVD video and audio, SACDs as well as standard CDs, in addition to having a slot for SDHC memory cards. It also handles pure DivX 6, JPEG, MP3 and WMA files. [full story]

December 3 - 4:50pm EST   Denon has recently shown off what it claims is the world's first truly high-end and universal Blu-ray player, the DVD-A1UD. Apart from the capability of playing Blu-ray and DVD video discs, the player also supports DVD Audio, SACD and standard DVDs and CDs. A built-in SDHC memory card will let users play files on the reusable media, with support for WMA, MP3 audio, DiVX 6 video and JPEG images. A built-in audio-restorer function improves the quality of compressed music. Denon's 4th-generaiton Link port promises integration with the company's amplifiers, including the AVP-A1HD and AVC-A1HD, as well as any future Denon products. [full story]

October 24 - 4:15pm EDT   Denon has recently announced the upcoming release of a high-end Blu-ray player that promises reference-standard playback, the DVD-3800BD. It's the first Blu-ray player to use the 10-bit Silicon Optix sxT2 HQV Realta chipset to provide the player with highest resolution HD video currently offered via an HDMI 1.3a connection with 36-bit deep color support. To ensure high-quality sound reproduction, Denon used a DDSC-HD audio output along with dual 32-bit floating-point Burr Brown DSPs and its AL24 processors and Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoders. [full story]

February 8 - 1:15pm EST   An extremely high-end Blu-Ray player from Marantz may ship by April, a new announcement suggests. Marantz's parent company, D&M Holdings, has revealed that "additional [Blu-Ray] models" should ship in the fourth quarter of FY07, which for D&M ends on March 31st of this year. While this likely includes at least one Blu-Ray player from the Denon brand, Marantz is known to be working on the the BD8002, a machine originally announced for the second calendar quarter of this year at CES. [full story]

December 17 - 10:35am EST   Denon today rolled out a last-minute gift option through two new compact stereos designed to pull content from non-traditional sources. The S-52 and its smaller S-32 counterpart both bring Ethernet and 802.11g WiFi that lets each system take music from any Mac, PC, or other networked storage and play it from the device using a relatively complex LCD menu system. It can not only play AAC, MP3, and WMA songs but also Internet radio and lossless formats like FLAC and WAV, Denon says. Those with a subscription or a free trial for Real's Rhapsody service can also stream content directly from the Internet, including both their own libraries and preset channels. Even the ... [full story]