Marantz New Products Interview Demos Separates & Blu-ray

Kevin Zarow, VP of Marketing for D&M Holdings, helped Marantz make their presence known in a big way at the 2008 Audioholics Expo. They debuted their new separates and flagship DLP video projector. The AV8003 and MM8003 are the first of the newly redesigned line of AV receivers and processors which borrow some of the cosmetic stylings from their Reference line. Dubbed the M1 chassis, the new design is also designed to better dissipate heat and reduce vibrations. Audyssey auto-calibration is include and so it XM and HD Radio. Balanced outputs are available on the AV8003 and a digital media player is included to allow consumers to stream content from a PC, Escient or NAS drive to the home theater.

The system not only does audio, but also plays video from networked storage - and does it seamlessly and quickly. The MM8003 is an 8-channel amp. 8-channels is an odd number, but the extra channel is made to handle an in-wall subwoofer.

They also showed the brand new Blu-ray player, the BD8002 which will decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD internally and send it out the 7.1 analogue outputs - making those with legacy receivers very happy. The unit also sends the lossless new formats via HDMI as well as uncompressed PCM for those with HDMI versions prior to v1.3.

Escient's new Vision system stores all DVDs, CD, and photos and will scale content to 1080p. It's a simple way to store, manage and access all of your content. Escient's graphical user interface is one of the best we've seen and it's incredibly easy to use. Marantz' flagship VP-11S2 was on hand and was equipped with their new anamorphic lens system which really generated a killer image that impressed everyone in the room.

Finally, Kevin showed us the new Snell speaker system that were extremely musical and did a great job at filling that huge room with sound.

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