Marantz DV7001 review

The Blu-Ray versus HD-DVD war is now in the trench warfare phase, with bemused consumers wearily traversing the no man’s land between the sides. But there is a third way to go hi-def – with a high-end DVD upscaler like the Marantz DV7001.

This home cinema beast is built like a tank, supports 1080p upscaling and handles DTS-encoding, DVD-Audio and SACD, plus DivX films. And, best of all, you won’t have to buy your entire movie collection all over again.

The only way is up

It’s pricey, make no mistake, but the DV 7001 is specified to match. The menus are a bit dated but it’s very simple to use, with an intuitive remote to match.

The older Marantz DV9600 was an award-winner, and this DV7001 impressed us enough straight out of the box for us to start to think Marantz might be on to another good thing.

Flawless picture

A Faroudja processor handles the 1080p upscaling and picture quality, as you’d expect from the price, is flawless. Whites are bright enough for a doorstep challenge while blacks are darker than the heart of Mordor, all without losing insight or overall stability.

The natural, stripped-down colour palette shows the Marantz can deliver brilliantly natural skin tones alongside brighter, dynamic colours.

The icing on this beefcake is the DV7001’s audio excellence. There’s bottom-end brawn, poised voices and a crisp, exciting top-end.

DVD’s not dead

Six hundred smackers is pretty steep for a DVD player and the DV7001 may have a battle competing with the many excellent low-end upscalers out there, such as Samsung’s DVD-HD870.

But with the format war showing no sign of abating, the DV7001 remains an excellent choice for the home cinema buff, particularly when paired with a decent receiver like Marantz’s own SR7001.