Denon DVD-5910CI Setting Up the Player

The DVD-5910CI's newest trick in its feature bag is its ability to upconvert to 1080p via its HDMI and DVI outputs. There are caveats however. You need a display that can accommodate 1080p - and if you're routing HDMI through your receiver, you better make sure its capable of handling 1080p. Some of the newer Denon models such as the AVR-3806, AVR-4306, AVR-4806 and the AVR-5805CI sport this ability.

When setting up HDMI, you must consider the following selection of HDMI YCbCr or HDMI RGB. In most cases, the former is the appropriate one to use (and is the only one that takes advantage of the 10 bit processing power of the 5910CI) with the latter being utilized mostly for computer type displays. It really depends on how the color space conversion of your display is done so I suggest trying both settings and if you don't see a notable difference, use the YCbCr setting.

There are two settings for HDMI.

Normal - signals are output to HDMI/DVI via digital RGB video range of 16 (black) and 235 (white)

Enhanced - signals output to HDMI/DVI with a digital RGB video range of 0 (black) to 255(white)

Normal is representative of Studio RGB levels for video playback which is likely how most DVDs are encoded. Keep it on the Normal mode to ensure you can display blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white information..

In most cases, you will leave this setting at +7.5 IRE and calibrate your black level accordingly. Denon offers the ability to change to 0 or +7.5IRE for greater calibration flexibility with more displays. Ideally you want black set at +7.5 IRE so that you can see below black info on the display. This is how it's done in the studio during the mastering process. Denon defaults the player to +7.5 IRE but if you use any of its memory settings, you will have to make sure you manually set each one to +7.5 IRE before calibrating your display. I found this out the hard way when I calibrated my display in default mode (+7.5 IRE) and later switched to Mem 1 to turn on the DNR and Enhancer features and later found I was crushing black levels since the player was now set to 0 IRE.

For more information on IRE levels, check out this post at HTF: Black Level 0 or +7.5IRE

Some of the basic video configurations you will have to make on your DVD-5910CI to get started include:

• TV Aspect Ratio: select wide 16:9 or 4:3 to match your display screen type.
• TV Type :select NTSC, Pal or Multi
• 4:3PS: play wide DVDs in pan & scan mode with sides of picture cut off
• 4:3LB: play wide DVDs in letterbox mode with black strips on top and bottom
• Wide (16:9): play wide DVDs in full mode
• TV System: select interlaced or progressive or HDMI/DVI
• Component Video Out: select interlaced or progressive independent of HDMI/DVI output
• Squeeze Mode: used to properly center 4:3 images with pillar boxes on the sides on a 16:9 screen
• Resolution: This allows the DVD player to scale to your displays native resolution. I found Auto mode to properly select the native resolution of my display if I had the player set to native instead of MAX panel resolution which in my display was 1080i. On some 1080p displays, you may experience problems with the player auto selecting 1080p if you set it for native. In this case, you may wish to set it for max panel resolution or select the proper resolution manually.
• Progressive Mode: video mode selection, we suggest using Auto since the integrated HQV processing does perfect cadence and flag detection on its own. As you will find in our HQV testing, the other Video modes simply don't perform as well.

The DVD-5910CI, like most of the higher end Denon units, has provisions for adjusting contrast, brightness, sharpness, hue, and gamma correction. This is particularly useful when connecting multiple sources to a display on a common video input.

DNR (Dynamic Noise Reduction) - recommended setting +1. Other have reported issues such as motion blur or what I refer to as video persistence if a setting greater than 1 is used but I didn't see this issue at all even at the max setting of +3. Denon must have since then addressed this issue via firmware (perhaps by readjusting the maximum rate of noise reduction available).

Enhancer - emphasizes the contour or sharpness of the image.

CCS - performs removal of color signal component for images in which the color signal component is mixed with the brightness signal. This feature is mostly used for still image purposes.

HDMI ver 1.1 wont pass native SACD, thus if you desire to transmit audio and video down the HDMI pipe, you must either convert the signal to PCM, use IEEE1394 digital, Dlink3 for Denon compatible hardware, or take the six conventional analogue connections from the DVD player to your processor. If you have a processor with active IEEE1394, I'd recommend using that for a total audio solution in lieu of HDMI. Of course if you have a Denon receiver with enabled Denon Link 3, that is your best bet, especially since it's a more robust, digitally balanced solution for audio with extremely low jitter.

IEEE1394 is a great one-cable solution to serve your audio needs, but be certain that your processor or receiver has an active IEEE1394 interface and not just a dead port found on many of the esoteric processors from the likes of Sunfire and others.

Editorial Note on IEEE1394:
EEE 1394 is a balanced interface low voltage differential serial interface. It is a pair of LVDS signals (2 pair) in addition to very aggressive grounding for those systems that are not galvanically isolated (the "b" form of 1394 supports both copper and optical connections, and the copper connections can be transformer coupled if necessary). It's an extremely fast external serial bus standard that supports data transfer rates of up to 400 Mbps (400 million bits per second). It is used primarily for multimedia devices such as camcorders, computers, digital audio recording workstations and, in this case, a digital transport for high resolution audio.

Denon Link is Denon's own proprietary low jitter balanced digital interface that communicates only with Denon Link-enabled electronics. You need to match the Denon Link version of the player to your receiver since DLink 3 uses a different signal format from DLink 2nd edition and below. Denon Link 3 allows for all current formats (except the newest DD+, DD TrueHD and DTS HD) to be passed digitally, including SACD. DLink 2 will pass all of these formats except SACD. If your Denon receiver is only Denon Link 2 or lower, be sure to configure it as such in the DVD player setup menu and connect either the IEEE1394 digital connection for SACD or the 6CH analogue outputs. DLink 2nd (Auto) automatically switches from Dlink to IEEE1394 for SACD if it detects digital signal otherwise it reverts to analogue. Of course if you want convenience over sound quality, you can use HDMI to convert SACD to 2CH PCM and again have a single cable solution for all of your audio formats.

We haven't found a single DVD player to date with the comprehensive bass management system found in some of the better receivers and processors on the market. That being said, Denon DVD players offer just about the best bass management we've seen in any DVD players regardless of price. Just like with previous Denon players, you have the ability to adjust trim level, and delay settings for every channel including the subwoofer. Best of all, the settings are applied to SACD. Unfortunately, however, the delay settings are still limited to 1ft adjustability, 1dB precision on the channel trims, and inaccurate test tones (mostly for the subwoofer channel), all which are bettered by good $500 AVR receivers these days

The crossover is not limited to 80Hz like most DVD players. Denon gives the following options for crossover settings: 40, 60, 80, 100, and 120Hz.

Source Direct bypasses bass management but maintains channel trims and delay settings. This is the only way to get SACD in native DSD format but unadvisable in most cases unless you are connecting the player to external bass management system such as an AVR receiver with bass management on its external multi channel inputs. Source Direct automatically boosts bass by +5dB for DTS and +15dB for SACD to ensure proper format level matching when connected to a processor.

Bass Enhance outputs bass to the subwoofer channel for 2CH CDs when using the analogue outputs. This is particularly useful for those who don't have full range speakers and require the subwoofer to be active for 2 channel program material when playing SACD.

There are two settings: 50kHz and 100kHz. We recommend 50kHz to reduce out of band noise inherent with the DSD noise shaping. This will ensure no noise will reach your loudspeaker tweeters at high output levels.

Kind of an odd name to label this portion of the menu, it does however house some important features you should not overlook. In the ETC Menu, be sure to properly set the player mode to "Audio" under Player Mode or it wont default to the lossless MLP track when you insert a DVD-Audio disc.

This gives users the ability to toggle the following circuits on and off: Digital output. Video output, and Display. You can even save two user settings or use "All Off" mode if you're a purist at heart and need the psychological reinforcement that you are now achieving the best possible fidelity playback of your DVD player despite the likely unmeasurable difference.