Denon S-5BD - Integrated 5.1 Channel Dual Zone A/V Receiver and Blu-ray/DVD/CD Player (Black) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This system looks great and the concept of combining a high-end receiver with a Blue Ray was the main attraction to purchase this unit. The set up was pretty simple and intuitive. The sound is great. I like being able to control the iPod directly from the onscreen menus. However, I am very disappointed with the performance of the disk player. The system is extremely slow to respond when I insert a disk (DVD or Blue Ray). It takes 30 seconds to 1 full minute to start playing the disk (and sometimes not at all - unit freezes up). I compared it to my much less expensive (entry level) Panasonic Blue Ray player using the same disks and Panasonic works much much much faster. Ejecting a disk also takes a long time and if I try to turn the unit off it becomes unresponsive for up to a minute (when in DVD mode). I have tried to address the problems by restarting the processor as described in the owners manual and I have tried updating the firmware. The firmware updated completed successfully but made no difference to the performance. I have also called Denon tech support and they suggested that I insert a 2 gig SD card and make sure that I have 1.3 HDMI cables. None of these solutions worked to correct the problem either. I finally took the unit back to the store and exchanged it thinking that it was that specific unit that was defective. - The new unit had the same exact problems. For a $1,800 unit I was expecting a superior performance for the Blue Ray player but ended up with something worse than an entry level. This must be a software problem. - Denon, pleeeese fix this problem. Until, a fix is implemented I would not recommend this unit.
I also did not appreciate Denon tech support trying to tell me that this behavior is normal and that all Blue Ray players just work a little different. I did not buy this from Amazon but rather directly with a retailer who was very accommodating in my request to exchange the unit.

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