Denon announced a new Blu-ray player that offers high-end audio format compatibility that should appeal to stereophiles or anyone with a high definition audio collection. The DVD-A1UD player supports SACD and DVD-Audio discs, the two formats which appeared on the market as potential replacements for the CD standard, though neither has gained much of a foothold. These discs store music on DVDs, holding up to 8.5GB per disc, use a higher sampling rate for supposedly higher-quality sound than you'd get from a CD, and can contain full surround sound recordings, instead of the simple stereo a CD is limited to. Denon claims to be the first company offering a Blu-ray player that supports both of these formats.

The DVD-A1UD offers plenty of other ways to play music and video even without an SACD or DVD-Audio collection, supporting WMA and MP3 audio files and DivX video, which you can either burn to disc or load into the player on an SD flash card. Although you can hook the device directly up to an HDTV over one of its HDMI connections, you'll probably want to route the signal through a stereo receiver supporting 7.1 channel sound to get the most out of the system. When the DVD-A1UD arrives in January it should cost almost $5900, keeping it well out of range of most consumers, but if you've an SACD or DVD-Audio fan and want to keep your home theater uncluttered, this is the one box that looks like it will do it all for you.

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