Marantz UD9004 Universal Blu-ray Player First Look

Apparently putting out high end, over the top priced universal Blu-ray players is contagious. Denon's, Lexicon, and now Marantz. One thing is for sure, however: The Marantz player is all original... at least to D&M Holdings. While there may be some debate about the changes and upgrades, the Oppo and Lexicon shared way too many layout similarities to be unique products. While we don't have a problem with clones (we wouldn't mind a few ourselves), when one is 7x's the price of the other, it makes you wonder exactly what they did to justify the price.

The Marantz UD9004 shares much with the Denon DVD-A1UDCI (Denon is also under the D&M Holdings umbrella). While the price of the Marantz is more ($5999 vs $4500), it isn't insanely more. Well, honestly, if you even look at price tags before you purchase your home theater equipment, you aren't shopping for either of these players. The Marantz UD9004 has many of the same connections as the Denon including 7.1 analogue outputs, balanced stereo out, and coaxial and optical audio out. On the video side, it has a fully compliment of composite (I'd love to meet the person with this player using this connection just so I could understand why), s-video (ditto previous comment), and component. Also like the Denon, the video and audio HDMI connection is split into two separate HDMI cables. While they state this is for high fidelity playback, the whole point of HDMI was to simplify connections to a single cable. Splitting them seems unnecessarily... oh, right, esoteric. Sorry, back to your regularly scheduled first look.

Marantz UD9004                        Denon DVD-A1UDCI

The entire chassis and case is overbuilt with aluminum and copper everywhere. The amount of copper is actually quite surprising as we were unaware that just constructing the feet out of the metal would make a sonic difference (they didn't claim that). The chassis is copper plated, the toroidal transformer is copper shielded, and the feet are machine milled solid copper blocks. Marantz is obviously serious about this player as they have broken down the internal components for you to see.

There is really no need to go into the components of the UD9004 Universal Blu player - if it is on the market and is the top of the line, they've shoved it in there. Silicon Optix REALTA HQV Video Processor? Check. 24fps, 36-bit Deep Color support? Check. 297MHz/12-bit Analog devices video DAC? Check. Wait, what? Oh whatever. Of course such a player will have support for 2.35:1 stretch mode for anamorphic lens pairing (what goes better with a $6k Blu-ray player than a $10k lens? We can't think of anything). Basically, if the Marantz UD9004 doesn't do it, it either can't be done or you're too unsophisticated to know that you shouldn't do it and you really are embarrassing yourself arguing with your Blu-ray player. 

Conclusion

If you are a consumer looking for advice on whether or not you should buy this player - well, you're probably from the future where people have moved on to true 3D and holodecks and you're one of those "only old tech is good, the new stuff sucks" guys. Well, really, you should be looking into vinyl cause that's where it is at. But if the alien heat rays melted all the LPs on the planet, then SACD is the next best thing (unless you can find reel to reel). No, the real consumer of the Marantz UD9004 doesn't browse the Internet looking for deals or advice. He (or she) just tells their installer to give them the best. If you are reading this, you can rest assured that you got one of the most expensive. So it must be the best right?

Check out more info on the Marantz UD9004.

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.