DVD-3910 Build Quality and Setup

After unpacking the unit I felt it to be a hefty, nicely-constructed player. Though a full 7 pounds lighter than the DVD-5900 "brick", the DVD-3910 gives the impression that there is more under the hood than your average universal player. The front panel is well laid out, with easy access to play controls as well as a pleasant surprise - a soft On/Standby button to complement the hard power button. In addition, the front panel can be used to select video output formats and there is a Pure Direct feature. The rear panel, the details of which have already been listed, is impressive as well with a clean layout and easy access and spacing for all connectors.

Being the finicky person that I am, I have to admit that the first thing I did with the player was plug it in and see what happened when the unit was placed in 'Standby' mode while the tray was open. The DVD-3910, unlike the DVD-5900, nicely sucked the disc back into the player before shutting down. Progress is a good thing.

Setting up the DVD-3910, despite its complex options and available configurations is actually not that difficult, provided you know where to look and are aware of some important menu areas. Assuming you'll want to use the player for analogue multi-channel SACD or DVD-Audio playback, one of the first places you'll need to stop is the Speaker Configuration menu (a subset of Speaker Setup) where you can configure your bass management options for the player. For Reference System 2 we configured the player to recognize all speakers as Small with a crossover setting of 80Hz - this coincided with the bass management I had already configured for the Integra DTC-9.4 processor.

The Channel Level menu allows you to configure the analogue output levels of the universal player in order to ensure that you have a balanced sound stage and that your subwoofer output level, in particular, isn't overbearing or non-existent. To my surprise, an SPL meter revealed that the levels did not need to be adjusted at all, a big improvement from the DVD-5900, in which the subwoofer +10 boost had to be enabled and the test tones were somewhat less than accurate. The DVD-3910 showed none of these problems, and as a result, setup was a breeze. While we cannot guarantee such an easy setup with everyone's system, this was shaping up to be a great user experience. Moving on, you'll also want to set up your Delay Time in order to select the distances between the loudspeakers and the central listening position. The heavy math (approximately 1.1ms delay per foot) is done in the player so you only have to have a tape measure to get good results. The Delay Settings, unfortunately, are limited to 1 foot in the English system - we always like to see at least .5 foot increments for better accuracy. For better results, change the units to 'meters' and you'll find you can adjust to within .1 meter increments (this equates to about 1/3 foot resolution).

You'll definitely want to set up the player to match the type of TV you'll be using it on. I can only assume that if you are buying a $1499 DVD player, then you most likely have taken the plunge into HDTV. In either case, be sure to select Wide (16:9) as your TV a spect ratio, unless you have a 4:3 television, in which case you may choose 4:3 LB (letter box). You will also see Squeeze Mode on this screen. This is only to be used to display 4:3 content in its proper aspect ratio on a 16:9 TV - unusual, and thus I recommend leaving it on the factory default OFF. Denon has always had cryptic progressive modes - something that is a thorn in the side of anyone wanting to take advantage of the different deinterlacing options available. While we recommend everyone leave it in the Default AUTO 1 24fps Film mode, you may wish to experiment with the other modes in certain instances when you are not watching a theatrical DVD with 24fps film source on it. Here's a quick breakdown of the progressive modes:

Of course, if for some reason you would like the display device to do the deinterlacing and video processing, you can always disable Progressive output of the player by selecting INTERLACED in the Video Out menu.