A Morning with Denon
On the morning of the 18th at the Hospital Club, London we attended a demonstration of some of Denon’s new mid-range home cinema equipment.
Space-saving was the focus of the presentation and this is exactly what Denon have done. The most impressive piece in the presentation was the sexy, piano black, DHT-FS3 which is also known more simply as the X-Space Surround Bar.
The X-Space Surround Bar provides incredible wrap-around surround with almost no wires and with no dependancy on bouncing sound off worlds. The striking thing about the X-Space is it’s ridiculously small form factor, this isn’t most evident in the sound bar itself but rather the subwoofer which, despite being about 10cm wide, 38cm heigh and 36cm deep, kicks out some astonishingly good bass. If you’re short on space or simply can’t abide or cope with the complexity of a full 5.1 or 7.1 surround setup then you might want to give this a look.
Denon also demonstrated their Smart S-302 Wi-fi Network DVD Home Entertainment System; showing off music videos, DVD, audio played from a connected iPod and internet radio out of its huge array of features. At it’s heard the S-302 is a fantastic upscaling DVD player, but the bigger picture reveals an extremely well thought out media-center-like device with a consistent, intuitive UI and integration both with home networks, USB storage devices and the internet. With the optional dock iPod integration is satisfyingly complete, music and video are both easily accessible with the S-302s own remote and even lowly iPod video is upscaled to 1080p if needed. The S-302 also boasts a surprisingly compact included subwoofer and speakers which I am lusting after for my home cinema setup.