Since 2004, Denon has outsourced some of its DVD players. It is now time for me to reveal this out. This is a secret DVD player production info not revealed by Denon:
The current Denon DVD player models (DVD-556S, DVD-756S, DVD-1720, DVD-1920, DVD-2910, DVD-3910, DVD-5910, DVM-715S, DVM-1815, and DVM-2815) are not all made by Denon. The Denon DVD-556S, DVD-756S, DVD-1720, DVD-1920, DVM-715S, DVM-1815, and DVM-2815 are being made and assembled by Funai for Denon, built to Denon's specifications. Only the Denon DVD-2910, DVD-3910, and DVD-5910 are made by Denon.
If you have never heard of Funai before, this is the company that currently produces products under the low-cost Emerson, Funai, some Insignia, Sylvania, SV2000, and Symphonic brands. Funal also manufactures DVD players, DVD recorders, DVD/VCR combos, and VCRs for Magnavox, Philips, Mitsubishi, Sanyo, and Sharp. Funai also manufactures printers for Lexmark and digital cameras for Kodak.
Even back in it's heyday (e.g. when the Dragon cassette player was THE deck to have), Nakamichi outsourced production of certain models to Sony. This is true for other manufacturers as well. There's nothing new to this phenomenon.
"Since 2004, Denon has outsourced some of its DVD players. It is now time for me to reveal this out. This is a secret DVD player production info not revealed by Denon:"
And before that, Denon also had some of their DVD players made by Matsushita Electric (Panasonic).
Early models of Denon DVD players, as a result, had the same problems as earlier JVC and Panasonic players that used the older Matsushita DVD drive: premature failure of the optical pickup.
Hitachi and select makes of GE DVD players were, for the longest time, originally manufactured by Samsung. They also suffered some of the same problems as the Samsung branded machines since they shared the same parts.
What's your point?
Anyways, Funai-made DVD players bearing the Denon brand are typically lower end. Higher end Denon players, on the other hand, are different as you've stated. - Reinhart