It's actually quite an understatement from Denon to call the DVD-1920 a
DVD Player. I think they should think of a new name for devices like this; "
Multi Player" or simply "
Disk Player" would have been a whole lot better (I understand "
Media Player" has been taken already). The DVD-1920 is just as good at playing audio CDs as it is playing DVDs. In fact, it's even better at playing CDs than my "real" CD player.
The Denon DVD-1920 supports a wide range of video, audio and still picture formats:
Video
- DVD Video
- Video CD
- DivX Video (DivX 5, DivX 4, DivX 3 and DivX VOD)
- XviD Video
Audio
- DVD Audio (DVD-A)
- Super Audio CD (SACD)
- Audio CD
- MP3
- WMA
Still Picture
Even though that's quite a list, there are a few widely available formats that are
not supported. The most obvious is that for some obscure reason, Denon has chosen to not support
MPEG files. I was also unable to play
WMV and
OGG Vorbis files.
DivX and XviD
After playing several DivX and XviD files on the Denon DVD-1920, I came to the conclusion that support for these two formats must have been added as an
afterthought. Even though the sound is good and the colors are vibrant, the DVD-1920 will
not upscale the picture to full screen, the picture is jerky, you can clearly see each keyframe, and it will not play content with AC3 sound. This means that watching a DivX or XviD on this player is pretty annoying, and I couldn't stand watching anything longer than just a few minutes.
My old $89 Sony DVP-NS32 DVD Player also supported these two formats, but the image quality was absolutely amazing on this player - even better than on my PC. So if DivX and XviD are of any importance to you, then you'd better get a second player.
Audio
Now this is something where the DVD-1920
does excel in. Any stereo audio source I played sounded deep and rich, and this was especially noticeable with higher bit rate MP3s. One very annoying thing however: the player will not play MP3s from DVD disks. So better burn those babies on CD-R instead.
I haven't been able to test an
SACD or
DVD-A disk yet since my receiver doesn't have the 5.1 channel analog inputs required for SACD and DVD-A. That's right, SACD and DVD-A can't be played over the digital outputs. This is
not a shortcoming of the Denon. In fact, no player will play SACD or DVD-A over digital outputs since this is simply not allowed with the formats (unless you can find a non-copyright protected disk somewhere). So until I get a new receiver, my expensive disks are downgraded to ordinary CD quality.
Still Pictures
The only format supported is
JPEG. The DVD-1920 will not display BMP, GIF, TIF or PNG or any other format for that matter. Since images from a digital camera are stored as JPEG anyway, this is not really a problem. What
is a problem however is that just like it won't play MP3s from DVD media, it won't show images from DVD media either. So if you've backed up your photos to DVD and want to view it on the DVD-1920, you're out of luck.
Disks
The manual states that the DVD-1920 can only read from
CD-R/RW and
DVD-R/RW. No mention is being made of
DVD+R/RW. However, I've had no problems whatsoever watching movies burned on DVD+R. But again, be aware the DVD-1920 will
not play MP3s or display images from DVD - of any kind.
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