Testing is only one aspect of video performance and although it is important I think the subjective test of viewing a movie is just as important.  Any of the “Lord of the Rings” Extended DVDs are an excellent source for video and sound quality.  Although they are not deemed “Superbit”, they were made with a high bit resolution.  I particularly like to use scene 4 from “Return of the King.”  It is an added scene so I won’t give anything away if you haven’t seen it.  The scene has a lot of close ups of actors, CG, and other special effects.  It also has excellent sound with Treebeard’s big voice panning across the front and some good bass effects.  I thought that this scene looked spectacular on the DV-9500.  In fact, once I started watching, it looked so good I ended up watching the entire movie - and this is no short feature!  I have been struggling with the fact that the player didn’t test as well as I had hoped but then looked awesome for movies.  The bottom line is that in a movie we don’t really pay attention to a line on a coffee cup as we did for the cadence testing. This is why we don’t recommend judging players solely on benchmark scores.

I played some scenes from The Matrix because there are some good dark scenes and high action scenes.  I could see no artifacts in the action scenes and the dark scenes showed shadow detail as well as my projector is capable of showing. I also tried another feature while viewing The Matrix which may be very important for those of you who are building a system but are starting out with two-channel audio..  The “SRS TruSurround” feature simulates 5 channel surround sound using only 2-channel stereo.  I disconnected all audio interconnects except the front channels.  Once I heard the surround content I couldn’t believe my ears. It had a full, rich surround sound feel.  I actually had to put my ear next to my center and surround speakers to make sure they were not on because of a surround mode my processor might have switched to.  Of course it isn’t the same as true 5.1, but it is well-suited for a great first piece of gear.

Since I saw some color differences between the HDMI and component in the HQV test disk I played “Finding Nemo”.  I switched back and forth between the HDMI and component and I did indeed notice the same color differences as before.  The colors on HDMI were not as vivid as the component which gave the picture a softer look but not blurred; it actually had a finer detail.  I’m not saying that it was necessarily worse, just different.  I preferred the HDMI because there was a lot less noise, which made for a crisper image.  Again I intended on watching only a few scenes but ended up watching the entire movie. This pattern of not wanting to stop the movie indicated that the image from the DV-9500 was not fatiguing.

As Audioholics staff analyzes equipment, we sit with test discs taking notes, looking for artifacts and jaggies. We listen for different aspects of sound stage and detail in music and there isn’t much time left to just enjoy.  So I decided to rent a movie, “Troy”, put away my notes, and just watch.  In the end I asked myself if there was anything about the player that distracted me from the movie, whether it was the audio or the video.  I became totally absorbed in the story without any distractions.  I’ll have to give this player a high enjoyment factor rating.  I did the same with “Star Trek, First Contact” at another time and had the same results where I was totally absorbed in the movie.  With past DVD players I might have been underimpressed by the lower video quality without ever realizing it.  I have to thank Marantz for giving me a new standard in home movies.

Other Formats & Features

First I tried a CD-R and it played without any problems.  Next I played an MP3 disk which I only did for the sake of review; MP3s are great for portable audio but not for a player of this magnitude. It also played fine.  I also tried the JPEG format thinking the player could be used for a slide show.  It showed the folders as a computer would and then the image can be selected and loaded.  Once it was loaded it played each image in succession.  The only problem was that a high resolution image loaded very slowly and lower resolution images were hardly viewable.  Keep in mind that my screen is 110 inches so magnifying an image to this size is going to look very grainy.

The design engineers at Marantz seemed to have thought of everything - even adding a headphone jack.  Someone might want a player that can be used without disturbing others in the household.  Beside the stereo mode of the headphone there were three other modes that simulated a small, medium and large room.  I used the headphone for some of the scenes from “The Matrix” and found that I preferred the large room setting best.  All the ambience settings were similar in that they only added reverb, they did not give the directional feel of surround sound but it is worth having if you decide to use headphones.

Functions that I found less than convenient to use with this player were the fast forward and reverse.  Pressing either button put the play at 2X then pressing it again put the play at 4X, etc.  The part I didn’t like was how it played. It would skip and stutter across sections of content to the point where it was hard to know what section it was playing.  This was more of a problem with audio discs because I only had one sense to rely on.

This player also supports HDMI audio but of course you must have a unit to decode it. Since SACD is still not supported over the current implemented HDMI spec, we recommend sticking with the high-quality analogue multi-channel outputs.

Conclusion

Although the DV-9500 is a universal player, I think that Marantz focused on audio first.  Additionally, with the Pure Mode feature, it seems that more attention went to SACD playback.  Even though it appears that Marantz had certain priorities when designing this player, the sound quality for every format was stunning.  In fact, the audio performance was so outstanding I just wanted to keep listening; whether it was multi-channel or two-channel, it seemed I just couldn’t get enough time to listen to music.  Once some of the quirky setup anomalies were overcome, this player was very easy to use and the menus were self explanatory.  The Bass Management for the multi-channel music was included in the speaker settings and, except for SACD DSD is fairly flexible approaching the level of receivers’ and processors’ bass management capabilities.. Although the distance setting for Direct Stream Digital (DSD) was not in effect, the performance sounded balanced and seamless.

On the video side of this player there is room for improvement with regard to the HQV bench test results. When it came down to watching movies, however, the DV-9500 had a high enjoyment factor.  You can imagine how good the image looked by considering the “Return of the King” screen shot I took.  After taking a medium resolution digital picture and then reducing the resolution again, will give you an idea of how sharp that image was.  Whether I used HDMI or component outputs the DV-9500 shone like a star.

This player fits every need, whether it is the first or the last piece in building a home theater.  It has features like the SRS TruSurround for a two-channel set up or the Dynamic Range Compression when entertaining guests.  If you really want to listen to hours of music from one disk it will even play that loaded MP3 disk.  The Marantz DV-9500 is a Universal Player packed with features and yet will satisfy those with the most critical ears or eyes.