Denon unveils first 1.1 profile Blu-Ray players

Denon today held an event to launch its first CI-series Blu-Ray players that are the first anywhere with Blu-Ray Profile 1.1 support. The stand-alone DVD-3800BDCI player and its transport-only DVD-2500BTCI equivalent incorporate a secondary AV decoder set that handles advanced special features in movies, such as picture-in-picture director's commentary or downloadable games, subtitles, or other extras that can be saved on a PC and loaded in the player from an SD card.

The 3800 also hides a new 10-bit Silicon Optix Realta decoder with better per-pixel image cleaning, 1080p upscaling for DVDs, and native processing for DolbyTrue HD and DTS Master HD Audio. As a transport, the 2500BTCI only provides raw audio and video feeds and requires a separate home theater receiver to process the final results over HDMI, Denon says. Both devices ship in the fall; the DVD-3800BDCI is priced at $1,999, though the DVD-2500BTCI has yet to receive a price of its own.

Denon also announced upgrades to its regular DVD player line, all of which add better Faroudja processors and HDMI output that upscales DVDs to 1080p while managing better 3:2 pulldown conversion of non-native frame rates and fine-tuned progressive scan modes. Models start at $169 for the basic, single-disc DVD-1740 and top out at $349 for the DVD-1940CI. A five-disc DVD changer, the DVM-745 ($269), has also been added. All the new conventional DVD players should be available today. [via Gizmodo]