Denon DVD 1910 - DVD player
Look Elsewhere
I recently bought a home theater projector, and though I originally intended to wait until the next high definition DVD standard (i.e. BluRay) was supported before upgrading my DVD player, the awful scaling artifacts I saw with it made me decide to find a replacement earlier than I had intended. <br /> <br />I first tried the Samsung 841 and overall was pleased with its picture quality using its digital (DVI) output as the feed to my projector.  But several mechanical quirks as well as lots of negative feedback on audio/visual news forums (as well as by several Amazon reviewers) convinced me to try the Denon 1910.  Well, about the only positive thing I can say about this player is that it has a nice remote.  The first problem I noticed with the 1910 was that the picture now looked very washed out.  Luckily I remembered reading on an AV forum that this was because the player's black level setting, which artificially brightens the image, is turned on by default.  Normally I wouldn't consider something like this to be a major issue, but the fact that I probably never would have figured out on my own how to unset this \\"feature\\" (as it is not an option on the video settings menu, but is for some reason accessible only through the hidden-in-a-crowd-of-buttons Mode button) is reason enough to dock this player 1 star. <br /> <br />Even worse, though, and the real reason I advise people to stay away from this player (at least when used with a projector) is that the Denon 1910 suffers from a bad case of what is called macro-blocking, where swirling clouds of brown, purple, and gray rectangles appear on what are supposed to be dark fields.  I never had this problem with the Samsung 841, and so decided to return the Denon 1910 the next day.  Lots of the reviewers here would disagree with my decision, and perhaps on their display devices the 1910 does work better.  But if you have a high-end projector chances are you'll get a better picture relying on its circuitry to do scaling, de-interlacing, etc., and all you want from your player is the ability to cleanly put bits on the wire, which the Samsung 841 seems much better at doing than the Denon 1910.