I distinctly remember talking about Denon’s DBP-1610, another ‘affordable’ baby from the makers of $7200 players. So if you walk into Denon World intending to splurge, this one might just seem affordable too .

All that money has to ensure a rock-solid player, and Denon delivers. Have a lookat hat they have to offer for $960.

A well-worked body at 4.2 inches tall and with a well-finished front panel that ever so slightly curves at the top to make for a great-looking front view of the player. The panel itself is devoted to useful stuff  like HDMI resolution, an SD card slot, besides the usual playback set. There’s also the expansive display that gives a lot of information that will save you the trouble of trying to decode cryptic on screen displays.  It comes in a choice of silver and black, the black one is up for your scrutiny.

Underneath the deceptively sleek exterior, it features a multi-layer chassis and it has a top cover of dual-layer metal, which help suppress vibrations and to some extent, justify the price within the Denon range.

The back panel is also quite busy, with multichannel audio outputs that should help many an audiophile. Since the DP-2010 also decodes Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio, so you can get an amplifier to enhance the crystal clear audio of Blu Ray.

In addition to the usual set of playback formats on a Blu Ray player, the DBP-2010 serves up DivX HD as well, but disappoints in afew areas – rather good ones, I’m afraid. It takes a jolly good time with the disc loading, and looks rathers tripped down since it has no inbuilt storage, WiFi or network capability. That’s the kind of behavior that’ll make you look at a NAD quick-loader, a Samsung feature-loaded baby or a Sony streamer.

But the only reason you’d need a Denon, is because you need a Denon, and not a Blu Ray player. Right?