Denon DHT500SD Review

The Denon DHT500SD all-in-one home cinema system has a beautifully styled wood look that is positively gorgeous in comparison to the many grey plastic equivalents out there on the market. The subwoofer unit is almost entirely covered with it, and the five magnetically shielded speakers are elegantly backed with it. The only let down is the DVD / Amp unit which is a sticks to grey metalic form, but hopefully this will be hidden away in the recesses of a TV cabinet.

But this system is not just beautiful on the outside - its pretty awesome inside too. It of course supports all of the major audio decoding formats that you'd expect a unit of this price to: Dolby Pro Logic II, Dolby Digital EX, DTS-ES, DTS NEO:6 and DTS 96/24, and the amp has a nice hefty 600W RMS output. Denon have also made it nicely future proof by enabling the device to be upgraded to 7.1 channel audio when the need arises. In terms of image enhancement, you can definitely make the most of your big screen TV: it comes with progressive scan technology to make the image crisper and sharper, and supports S-Video out for the ultimate in picture quality.

In terms of media format it supports pretty much anything video related - VCD, DVD, CD, CDR, CDRW. It does come with DVD-A support, but not SACD support unfortunately, but as they're not widely used yet and support is rare. It does support MP3/WMA CDs and JPEG output.

The Denon DHT500SD comes with a RDS-compatible radio for your listening pleasure, and also an optical audio input for listening to your digital-out compatible MP3 player through your surround sound system.

In our performance tests the DHT500SD did well. Visuals were crisp and clear, and although a touch overexposed it was hardly noticeable. The audio was perfect - bass was just the right balance and the high notes came through with all of the minute detail that you'd expect.

Pros

• Beautifully styled
• Great sound decoder support
• Good support for a variety of media
• Good choice of inputs and outputs
• Progressive scan
• Easy to set up

Cons

• No SACD support
• Very very slightly bleached visuals
• Shame they couldn't style the DVD unit a bit

Conclusion

The Denon DHT500SD is not just a great looking piece of kit it is also very good under the bonnet too. As a good all rounder in terms of media support and audio decoding formats, and with progressive scan image enhancement, it will work perfectly for even the fussiest home cinema buyer. It looks great on screen and in the living room and sounds awesome - what more does one system need?

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