In any case, the best recent film soundtracks, from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring to Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones, sounded awesome on the Marantz.īut the DV-8300 does not live by movie soundtracks alone. The DV-8300's built-in Dolby Digital and DTS decoders were slightly less open-sounding than the corresponding decoders in Outlaw's remarkable little 1050 receiver, a result I credit to the Outlaw's more flexible bass management. Whether I listened through the priciest surround processor on the market or a modestly priced receiver, moving from the Marantz to other DVD players-even far more expensive ones-didn't materially change the sound I got from Dolby Digital or DTS soundtracks using a digital connection. In my recent experience, agonizing over the differences in sound quality between DVD players with today's best Dolby Digital and DTS DVD soundtracks is frustrating and ultimately unrewarding. In short, improving significantly on the Marantz's basic video performance with today's best DVDs would be a challenge at anything like a reasonable price. This discrepancy remains a puzzle, but it might be related to differences in the way the two displays upconvert their inputs: the Hitachi to 540p, the Sony LCD to 720p. There, the images produced by the Marantz (deinterlacing issues aside) were identical in interlaced and progressive modes. This was not the case on the smaller Hitachi RPTV. Interestingly, even with the initial sharpness setup, the players looked very much the same in progressive mode on the LCD projector, though the Marantz was noticeably softer than its interlaced performance. While careful adjustment of the available Sharpness controls produced virtually identical images from the two machines, I could squeeze an extra milligram of sharpness from the Marantz-but this was meaningful only with the very best, most edge-enhancement-free DVDs. In an interlaced comparison, the NS999ES was just barely softer than the DV-8300, but on a number of shots in Bedazzled this was enough to make the edges look a little more natural on the Sony. But here the differences were much more difficult to spot, so I moved the comparison to a bigger screen (80 inches wide), using Sony's very sharp VPL-VW12HT LCD projector. The result was similar when I compared the DV-8300 with the Sony DVP-NS999ES. But on fine details, the Marantz scored big the rich textures of Monsters, Inc., particularly Sully's hair, jumped off the screen with the Marantz in a way they did not with the EAD. The EAD looked consistently clean, filmlike, and a little lush compared with the crispness of the DV-8300.
In Bedazzled, for example, some of the image edges looked a little too sharp and video-ish on the Marantz. Even with the relatively small but superb 51-inch-diagonal picture of the Hitachi 51SWX20B RPTV, the EAD looked slightly softer and warmer than the Marantz on live-action films. I was not able to compare the EAD DVDMaster 8000Pro's audio directly with the Marantz's, but I did compare the video in progressive mode.
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