Marantz Officially Announces BD7003

Marantz USA has officially announced their new Blu-ray Disc player which was first shown during CEDIA earlier this month. The Marantz BD7003 is a BonusView capable player coming at a much lower price point than the company's first offering, the BD8002. While a complete list of specs is still forthcoming, we do have a preliminary list to dive into. On the video side, the player will support 1080p24 Deep Color via a HDMI v1.3a connection. For audio, the player will support bitstreaming of all audio codecs, as well as decoding support for DTS-HD (non-MA) and Dolby TrueHD. The player is scheduled to hit store shelves in November at a suggested retail prices of $799.
Source: Blu-ray.com | Permalink	Relevant for:

Lucy Diamond  » Sep 25, 2008
They display some IMPRESSIVE engineering techniques at that company. Go ahead, crack your open one day.

Grifter02  » Sep 25, 2008
What is with these supposedly "high-end" manufacturers not supporting DTS-HD MA decoding? It makes them look like they have no idea what they're doing! Who would pay so much for hardware that's missing features from products at half the price? You cannot convince me that 1080p video coming from this machine looks any different from 1080p video coming from a Sony or Panasonic player.

Woody  » Sep 25, 2008
Right now there is only 1 other less expensive player that does what you are suggesting via analog. The Pana 50, which is on Amazon right now for $557.00. That is significantly above half of $799.

KretzJ  » Sep 25, 2008

Grifter02 - While I agree to a point with your sentiment about "how more good could it be?"... I realized many years ago that there is a difference, at least in the audio world, with price point. I got to the point where I thought all "high-end" audio pretty much sounded alike until I visited a house here in Scottsdale owned by a couple with WAY, WAY too much money on their hands. The man had a room dedicated to audio only... his listening room. No TV, etc. He had spent more than $120,000 in Krell components alone and the speakers cost nearly that much. In total over a quarter million dollars when into the room in just equipment. After listening to my own discs, records, etc in that room I realized there IS a difference. I just had to come to terms with the fact it was SO far above my ability to afford that it was meaningless to me. I've seen differences in 1080p presentation... but that's mostly driven by the monitor not so much from the player. With the advent of true digital signals (BR reader to receiver via HDMI for example) the signal degradation issues (that really made a ridiculous market for Monster Cable) will come to an end. Electronics manufacturers will have to sell themselves on features, not "quality". It will be rough for some as they simply won't get it. Monster still tries to convince me their $200 HDMI cable is better than my $35 Fry's Electronics cable. The fact that here on the board we get in a tizzy if a new player doesn't support SuperDupaAudioCODEC MA HA HTM v2 is really pointing to that shift... we're now looking for feature sets, not supposed quality difference. When I moved my home theatre completely to HDMI a few months ago I was actually disappointed... not in the quality as it rocked... but in the effort. I use to look forward to spending hours re-wiring the cabling, ensuring everything is hooked up. With HDMI I was done in 10 minutes and spent 2 hours running the diagnostic mode on my Pioneer receiver. I miss the days of running cables. Our beloved pastime is changing.

moviefan  » Sep 25, 2008
DTS MA via HDMI is featured on the Panny 50 now, and wil be standard on the 55 model coming out soon.. It will also be standard on the Sony S550 due out on October 19th. I will buy the first one out!

Woody  » Sep 25, 2008
I wouldnt bet the farm on the 550, go check the updated specs on it.

mr.hidef  » Sep 25, 2008
Grifter 02 , are you blind? Yes it does do DTS MA.....Bitstream.....bitstream, sounds better anyways.(also true hd)Any time now the PS3 fanboys will attack this 1.....2.....3.....4....

Grifter02  » Sep 25, 2008
Playstation 3 is $400, half the price of this, and it internally decodes DTS-HD MA, and does everything else this machine could possibly do, and more. Again... for half the price! Only two small features are missing from the PS3 - multichannel analog output, and bitstreaming lossless audio. Neither are worth double the price.

mr.hidef  » Sep 25, 2008	Show comment Hide comment
Told ya!

mr.hidef  » Sep 25, 2008	Show comment Hide comment
PS3, does NOT internally decode DTSMA..............get your facts straight.

Grifter02  » Sep 25, 2008
mr.hidef Ummm... you might want to get your facts straight, internal DTS-HD MA decoding was implemented on PS3 a long time ago. While there may be some advantages to bitstreaming, there is still no good reason why a machine this expensive can't decode internally for the people who's receivers don't natively decode the new codecs.

mr.hidef  » Sep 25, 2008
DTS MA is lossless...............yeeeeesh! The onkyo 605 was $299.00 the other day on amazon?

Grifter02  » Sep 25, 2008
mr.hidef What the hell are you going on about? You're not even making sense! Why am I blind? I asked why it doesn't DECODE DTS-HD MA, I can see that it bitstreams!

X400  » Sep 25, 2008
Well.... they couldn't make it uglier :/ but since its a Marantz im hoping its got a great build

Grifter02  » Sep 25, 2008
mr.hidef Who cares about your shitty cheap-ass Onkyo? What about someone who bought a $3000 receiver a few years ago? It still sounds amazing today but it's unable to decode the new lossless codecs, so this player is useless to them!

mr.hidef  » Sep 25, 2008	Show comment Hide comment
PS3, only does the "core". That's not full dtsma. Huge sound difference, on the other hand oops, my bad, I read it wrong(decoding part)

Grifter02  » Sep 25, 2008
Wow, you're little out of the loop, buddy. PS3 decodes the full MA track and outputs as PCM via HDMI. Oh, and thanks for letting me know there's a huge sound difference between the core and the full track, because I never knew that before... :P

mr.hidef  » Sep 25, 2008	Show comment Hide comment
Dude, bashing on this site will get you kicked off, and I have a 805, not a 605. I was making a helpfull suggestion, because from you sig, you are a noob to this site. sorry I did not know you wre an expert .

Grifter02  » Sep 25, 2008
I'm no expert, but apparently I know a lot more than you do, so maybe you should stop bashing people and actually learn something first.

mr.hidef  » Sep 25, 2008	Show comment Hide comment
In forums months ago, sony said it wasn't able to decode the full dtsma tracks, because it wasn't built in at release. Even firmware upgrades would not give you the full codec.......so I am going on what SONY said, but obviously you are an expert and work at sony and build them for a living so I will be quiet now.

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