Marantz UD8004 Universal Disc Player (Black) Review

I am not familiar with anything comparable: my previous CD/DVD players were Toshiba’s HD-A2KU and Onkyo’s DV-CP701. The Marantz UD8004 is one notch below their flagship, the UD9004, at more than twice the price. The UD 8004 is a hefty, serious and stylish machine. This a Universal Disk Player, which means you have it all in one machine. It plays everything, expect HD DVDs (This is a dead technology, so don’t worry about it). If you are reading this review, you must be reallly serious about sound & video. Press the “pure” direct button on the remote control, or on the deck, to turn off the video signal and enjoy the audio signal only. The image resolution, color saturation and sharp, detailed definition in Blu-ray are simply amazing (test it with the Planet Earth series). You can fine-tune these to suit your taste. I have mine set to “normal”, so that it adjusts automatically to the kind of movie format you are playing. There are 3 minor annoying points: the disk tray slams shut, it takes a while to load both music & films, and it makes a rasping/scrapping sound when loading music. If you don’t care about these inconveniences, I strongly recommend you get this machine.  Read more... (454 words, 1 image, estimated 1:49 mins reading time)