It also offers five picture memories, allowing quick changes for different material. The 5900 passed just about all of our tests with the exception of pixel cropping. For some reason, five pixels were cropped on the right side of the image. Some notes though must be brought up on this player. While it passed our layer change test flawlessly, similar to the DVD-2900, I noticed some layer changes watching different DVDs. It occurred only been on occasion and lasted about a half second in length, but I thought I’d mention it.

While the layer change is zippy, menu navigation is unusually slow. This is a step backwards from previous Denon players we have looked at including: DVD-9000, DVD-3800 and DVD-2800. Some menu changes take as long as 3 seconds.

There have also been complaints of “macroblocking” reported by some consumers out there. We were not able to reproduce this effect except in the low IRE (30 IRE) window patterns contained on the AVIA and Video Essentials DVDs. I was able to almost completely eliminate this patching in the Denon’s video setup menu, but it is still a concern. I have yet to see the same artifacts during a movie though. We suspect it might be an iDCT precision error possibly caused by rounding errors. We have seen this before with some older Apex DVD players that used ESS MPEG decoders. We don't recall seeing in the DVD-3800 or DVD-9000 but will try and locate to see if the problem exists.

Some highlights of this player are the unlimited number of user settings, including cross color suppressor control, Y/C delay adjustments, and gamma control. You also have five memories to program that work with both analog and DVI video outputs. At the time of this writing, we have spent a limited amount of time looking at the DVI output. There are several features that seem to be disabled over DVI that should not, including aspect ratio control and YC delay adjustment. Both of these features are important and we hope Denon can enable wtih a future software update.

What is real nice about this player is that it has Faroudja DCDi processing. This player also features their new MPEG decoder that does not have the chroma upsampling error (CUE) long associated with their other players.

The player does not feature DVD-A or SACD support as most of their other Elite line does.

The player did have some issues with subtitles. It is also cropping quite a bit of the image with 8 pixels on top and 2 on bottom. This player also had one of the slowest layer changes, coming in at about 3 seconds.

Another caveat is the player’s excessive start-up time when you plug it in. It takes several minutes for the player to power up to a useable state. For those that own TiVo's, this is normal behavior. The menus were okay, although a bit limited, and the remote was more suited to the TiVo than the DVD portion of the player. The player also produces a loud noise that was evident every time I used the remote.

Some pluses were the player’s very speedy response when navigating and chapter skipping. Also, the inclusion of the Faroudja processing is definitely a habit I would like to see Pioneer get into.

The 910 uses Faroudja DCDi deinterlacing, which makes it one of the few less expensive players offering this feature. It pretty much smoked all the deinterlacing tests as it should and didn’t show any signs of any chroma problems. Thankfully, the cross color suppressor is off so you won’t be seeing any flicker in solid colors.

Layer change was a tad sluggish for a Denon at about 2.5 seconds. Build quality is a bit questionable and there is no support of any high resolution formats such as DVD-A and SACD. The player did pass blacker then black but could not hold the black level with a high APL pluge pattern. We are not sure at this time if it is a player or display issue.

Some other gripes worth noting are the sluggish response to command and the lack of a detachable power cord.

Some nice touches though are both coaxial and Toslink digital outputs, which have been lacking on some cheaper players out there. The player also supports MP3 playback.

The 563 also features Pioneer’s “Pure Progressive Cinema” denterlacing solution, but it is not implemented as well as their Elite line and lacks the user options to dial it in. The player was unable to pass our pixel cropping and layer change tests. It cropped two full pixels on the top, bottom, and left side, plus another five pixels off the right. Using our full bitrate layer change test, the player was a bit sluggish at two seconds.

The audio section is what I expected out of a player in this range. While most will probably be satisfied, it doesn’t come near the performance and detail of higher end offerings. The bass management is quite limited with a fixed 100 Hz crossover which leaves a bit to be desired. While it is hard to compare this player to some of the others in this shootout, given its price point, it is a decent option for those not looking to break the bank.

The remote control is poorly labeled and lacks some key buttons like “Title Menu”. You also get about a 2-3 second delay with each command making you second guess whether the command you entered was accepted or not.

The player also only features a coaxial digital output and doesn’t feature a Toslink out. The only pluses I could find here were the rather speedy response to navigation inputs and the fact that they included a tuner in the unit.