Denon B-Stock

I'm considering getting either a denon 2200 or 2900 dvd player. I noted some dealers offer B-Stock for about 2/3rds the price. Has anybody had any experience with B-Stock from denon & any comments on the 22 vis the 29. My read says the 22 offer bass management and the 29 does not. Video of the 29 appears to be better on the 29. I suppose I could use the bass mgmt of the 950, but could avoid the a/d/a if the dvd-a or sacd did it for me.
thanks,
mike

according to denons site, both offer bass management. from the specs i didnt see hardly any differences at all other than denon optomized dacs for the 2900. you should be careful buying bstock, because you never know why a product failed... a lot of times, one problem precludes others.

i am very happy with my 910, just got it a month or so ago new. i decided to hold out on a higher model until hd-dvd comes out, considering my interest is video.

For DVD-A and SACD, the 950's analog bass management does not involve A/D/A conversion -- the combination of 2900 and 950 would work fine for DVD-A and SACD, and the digital output for DVD-video wouldn't use the DVD player's bass management anyway.

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gonk -- 950 Review | LFM-1 Review | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | Saloon Links

Gonk, good point, I'd completely forgotten about the analog management in the 950. I'm leaning towards the 2900, as it has better video performance from the hometheater shootout. I'm thnking of dakmart to get a B stock unit. Price was around 650, and I don't care if it has a few dings on the outside. I wish I had more insight into B-stock quality. I also wish I would have stuck "DVD" in the title of the thread so it was more obvious what I was looking for.

I purchased a Denon 2800 mk11 refurbished from ecost for $330 about a year ago and have had no problems with it whatsoever.It still carries the warranty as well...

Stabie,

I got b stock 2900 from Dakmart a month ago. I have not had any problems. All the features work as advertized. I havn't tried DVD audio but SACD sounds as good as Sony XA777es (which was moved to my 2 channel system) with my home theater speakers. Video looks better then Phillips Q50 it replaced.

I am hoping that b-stock already had one thing repaired and thus will be good for a long time. Price is certainly more attractive. I am happy with it so far. You wouldn't be able to tell it's b-stock if I did not inform you.

I am using ICBM with multi-channel playback. I have not had too much time to play with all the extras, yet. Hope this helps.

b-stock generally carries a lesser warranty than the original manufacturers. i didnt see any video differences up the line of denons until i saw the 5900, and it is just too much for a dvd player (esp. since it was marginally better at best, for video i mean). not needing sacd/dvda support (still can/do get my music for free, yeah internet!), i got the 910 and am very happy with its performance. my only qualm before buying it was it looked kind of cheap and it is pretty small, however those worries were unfounded, and it is excellent. if it was my money id get the 2200 (bstock if you want), and replace it with hd-dvd and move it to 2 channel or whatever; sell it. better yet, you could demo them and see for yourself that you are tossing your money out the window... perhaps you would convince yourself that you arent...

I tested all the current Denon players about 6 months ago. The 2900 is nice and has pretty good build quality compared to the 2200 that I thought was pretty flimsy for $599 or so, very similar to the 1600 which has marginally better video quality due to the Faroudja chipset (the 2200 and 2900 have the Silicon Image chipset which is also excellent) but no SACD. I believe the 2900 is due to upgrade very soon so there may be some deals to be had on this unit. I purchased a b-stock 3800 with all the software upgrades and couldn't be happier for $475, the unit is a beast and used the difference between that and the 2900 to buy a Sony sacd player on audiogon. Mark

Thanks for all the replies. I ordered the B 2900 and am awaiting. I wanted SACD/DVD-A so for denon that meant the 2200/2900 or 5900. The 5900 was tooooo much. The 2900 has the silicon image part, which is an added bonus as they are a customer of mine.

I'll post my impressions when it arrives.
Mike

i think faroudja is the better chipset, evidenced by its presence in the 5900 and it and the 910s rave reviews on hometheaterhifi.com shootout. the 2900 is sweet too though. good luck with it.

Phiips DQ50 also has Faroudja chip set and the picture was gorgeous. It also had that annoying 2 second freez-frame once a movie. So there are other implementation issues that matters aside from the main engine. I have not seen any obvious faults with 2900.

At its B-stock price, there really is no better value universal player. I thought about going with a Sony since I have many SACD's and no DVD audio as of yet, but I wanted the option of being able to play DVD audio if I get some in the future. Now, I just have to find some time to enjoy it, but I've been on a vinyl kick lately, which take me to the 2-channel room away from TV.....

yeah totally i agree, although the layer change (that is the freeze frame you are talking about) on my 910 was rated poorly on hometheaterhifi and i find it to be acceptable. the good news is if you are watching burned movies you dont have to deal with the layer change because there is only one layer. double layer technology just came out in a burner but no discs...

I'll preface all of this with the statement that I've only recently moved up to a TV capable of handling progressive scan playback and am still using an interlaced player, so this is all based on what I've read. From what I recall of the Secrets shootouts, the Faroudja is considered one of the best (if not the best) deinterlacer. The Silicon Image chipset is not as good as the Faroudja for video material, but for film I understand them to be very comparable.

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gonk -- 950 Review | LFM-1 Review | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | Saloon Links

First to B-Stock. From what I can tell, no difference whatsoever on the one I got. Cosmetically, no dents, dings, scratches. Even the connectors look new. The manual, oddly enough was worn. I would say I was disappointed in the manual as well. It is not very good. My old sony had a much more informative manual. They gloss over alot of the features and their description of the BM for DVD is horrible.
Overall pretty happy with the player. The video appears a little better, but I find video pretty hard to assess since I don't have a test disc. It does play a couple of DVD's my old sony would reject for some reason. Although the sony is a really old model.
I have listened a couple of ways. On the downstairs HT system in 2ch stereo/no sub 2 ch stereo/w sub and 5.1. So far, on the HT system my preference has been for 2ch/no sub. Not sure why, but I'm just not taken with the sub on for music. On some stuff, I'd like a little more thump, but the single sub just doesn't sound quite right. For movies, I don't notice much. The 5.1 just was not good for me. The mixes in 5.1 were inconsistent. (even on a single disk from one song to the next) I'll probably stear towards SACD stereo for now. More later