What Hi Fi Sound and Vision
15 AUG 2006
Arcam DiVA DV137
We’ve got to hand it to Arcam: for a comparatively small company, the Cambridgeshire firm has maintained a sterling presence in the home cinema market, readily competing with the biggest and best Japan can offer.
That’s doubly impressive given the company’s hitherto conservative outlook to facilities and features: in the past, Arcam kit competed well on a performance-driven basis, but often eschewed the fashion-dictated plethora of must-have gadgets swamping the spec sheets of Japanese kit.
Arcam goes all-out for features
Not any more. The DV137 DVD player boasts a similarly contemporary specification: it’s the first Arcam to offer video scaling, and the first to provide support for SACD discs, giving it universal disc replay capability.
The DV137 also includes a video set-up wizard, which provides simple test card patterns to help you fine-tune your display. In addition, the player provides all manner of features home cinema enthusiasts are bound to approve of, from a sophisticated audio delay manager to help fine-tune lip-sync (which can be a problem with some displays) to ‘always on’ RGB Scart video, meaning you can connect it to two displays at the same time should you choose.
Does the new stance signal a departure from Arcam’s traditional virtues? Not a bit of it. The DV137 may pack more toys than ever, but it remains, first and foremost, a fine all-rounder.
Playing a CD on this DVD player, as some of you will want to do, remains a rewarding experience: it’s far more articulate and musical than any class rival. Movie sound is excellent, the DV137 extracting detail that eludes some rivals, while also presenting movie soundtracks with firm, accurate bass.
It's hard to justify the price premium
But, of course, the Arcam is a DVD player first and foremost and, while a very, very good one, it’s not quite as price-competitive as we’d like. Using a SIM2 HT3000E DLP projector, a 1080p-compatible display, the Arcam’s picture is excellent, of that we’re in no doubt. It provides an outstandingly detailed and beautifully stable image.
However, with this and other, lower-resolution displays, we’d struggle to justify the Arcam’s £400 price premium when comparing it directly to Pioneer’s £850 DV-989AVi, despite the latter player’s theoretically inferior scaling options. If anything, in fact, the Japanese player seems even richer and more filmic
Now, that’s not to say you shouldn’t try the Arcam for yourself. You absolutely should: it’s a very fine player indeed, and if you want to use it to listen to music too, it’s even more compelling. But if you simply want to watch DVDs, you could save yourself more than a few quid and buy a Pioneer: it’s not only just as good, in some ways, it’s actually better.