Flagship

Marantz has announced its new flagship Blu-ray player, the UD9004.

Unlike nearly all other BD players, this one also plays SACD and DVD-Audio discs.

That, plus it has pretty much every other feature you can think of. All the info after the jump.

The brains of the operation are two Analog Devices SHARC 32-bit digital signal processors. There are four separate circuit boards. Like many other Marantaz products there is a pure direct mode that turns off the video components to minimize any chance of interference with the audio. As you'd expect, there's full on-board decoding of the new audio formats like Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. Each channel has 192 kHz/32-bit D/A converters and the left/right channels have XLR outputs.

The heart is a copper-encased toroidal power transformer.

On the video side, dual HDMI outputs are fed by the Silicon Optix Realta HQV chipset, with a 297MHz/14-bit Video DAC. Of course, there's 1080p/24 output.

Perhaps most interesting, at least on the video side, is on-board "Vertical Strech" processing. This will stretch a 2.35:1 movie vertically, removing the black bars. This feature is for those that have (or want) an anamorphic lens for their projector, and a 2.35:1 screen. Instead of relying on the processing inside the projector to do this stretch, the UD9004 gives you another option. Will it be better than the processing in your projector? Can't hurt to give it a try.

The Marantz UD9004 should be available this month.

PRICE:
UD9004: $5,999.99

CONTACT: Marantz.com