Hi all,

Happy New Year to all of us!

I've recently purchased a Marantz DVD player, model 8400.
I first was a little bit suprised to see that the DVI-D output was "HDCP" compatible only while my monitor was not so that I could not use the digital video connection.
More important was the fact that the player could not deliver any Progressive Scan under PAL even through the component output (the logo is not displayed and the "motion" parameter only operating under progressive mode is not effective either).
Actually I was able to test 2 models at home before making my final decision i.e. between the Marantz 8400 and the most recent Pioneer 868-avi-s. The Marantz had a superb video and the sound was wonderful as well (conveying a lot of emotions). When I played the Pioneer, I immediately found the sound to have more dynamics but tiring after a short elapsed time (with tones not as warm), the image to be even finer but noisy (as if the pixels had been added but together with some extra video noise as well) and above all the colours were awfull, totally unnatural. Back to the Marantz, colours were as bright but really natural, almost in 3 dimensions, like in a true movie (I played Star Wars I and Disney's Dinosaurs). However the progressive scan option with the Pioneer did work well and improved the motions quite a lot on my NEC plasma.

According to Marantz's web site, the 8400 should be able to "standardly" provide progressive scan for both NTSC & PAL but so far I haven't got any answer back from their customer service.

Could anyone help or bring any further information/comment to my experience?

Thanks in advance & regards,

Ha-De