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Denon announced its support for the Blu-ray high definition format with the unveiling of its DVD-3800BD Profile 1.1 player last month.

Due for release in Australia next year, the DVD-3800BD is touted by Denon as a ‘reference standard' player.

A look at the specifcations shows that the Denon deck is worthy of such a moniker. As well as being one of the first Profile 1.1 Blu-ray player – making it capable of picture-in-picture playback of separate audio and video streams for full BD-Java interactivity – the DVD-3800BD will also be the world's first BD deck to feature the 10bit HQV Silicon Optix REALTA chipset, providing enhanced video performance with upconversion and IP scaling to 1080p.

Denon also claims that the technology's pixel-by-pixel and Digital Noise Reduction feature even works with Blu-ray discs to produce unrivalled high-resolution image quality. Audio components are just as advanced. The unit features AL24 processing and decoding of Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, and is capable of outputting both 7.1-channel analogue signals and PCM audio via HDMI output.

Also on the horizon is Denon's DVD-2500BT, a Profile 1.1- compliant Blu-ray Transport. This machine allows owners of advanced AV receivers, like Denon's AVR-4308, to add Blu-ray capability to their existing systems, and will natively output an HD audio bitstream to a connected receiver via HDMI. Once this signal is accepted in the receiver, it can then be decoded into its native format, including Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.

Prices and specific availability have yet to be announced.

See: www.audioproducts.co m.au