I've never gotten the opportunity to listen to a Marantz powering the same system a Denon does, but Denons usually have more of the latest and greatest features when compared to Marantz. When I was looking for a new receiver, I heard people say that Denons are great for movies and Marantz are great for music. They're owned by the same parent company, so I'm sure they share some components, but I don't know if there's that much overlap. I think they each go after a different type of consumer to a certain extent, but do overlap, even in that sense.
Gallery furniture is always the answer (if you live in Houston) I got a very good, affordable media room with reclining seats and a huge TV from GF. Gallery furniture covers pretty much every category of home furniture and although they wouldn't seem like a home media room place, they make them just as good, if not better, than anyone else.
I haven't listened to either in a long while myself. But I just wonder if a lot of these names are just marketing and distribution tools. In any case, something I've yet to see posted in this thread is the importance of matching the components to each other and to the speakers. Meaning, a top-notch "bright" sounding receiver may not sound very top-notch if it's mated to "bright" sounding speakers (such as B&W's). It's good to try and buy everything in the same store and have them create the entire setup there for you so that you can sit, relax, and listen to your favorite music for a long while (with eyes closed of course ) before writing the check.
I don't know enough about receivers. It seems like there are a lot of varying opinions on them. Are they the most important piece in the puzzle?
The receiver is certainly not the most critical component in a home theater. In fact, when considering all of the numerous components, sources, loudspeakers, and screens, kindly note that the loudspeakers will be your most tangible asset. My final system involved 50% of my budget going toward the purchase of loudspeakers. I sampled a variety of congruently powered receivers and separates, and determined that the difference between a Denon and a Marantz was not very noticable. However, when I sampled the McIntosh, I did indeed notice more than a subtle improvement, however it did not justify the astronomical price - Of course the McIntosh gear is considered high end in some circles. I will not be the first, and certainly not the last to recommend Sonus Faber's. I shall likely never purchase another set.
Benefit? Huge screen, "different, cinematic" picture-experience, full 1080p Poorer quality switching to larger screen? No, not necessarily. This will depend on your projector's specs, size of screen, screen material itself (don't be cheap), and ambient lighting in the room. The main factor is light, both ambient and the projector's lumen output. All the ones I suggest here will blow* a 65" and under flat-panel TV away at this price range. They have solid light output so you can watch them with lights on though I doubt you'd want to that for the lamp's limited life or maybe lower picture quality. *That being said, here's Phil Hinton's excellent post on this subject for people with your concerns, "You will very rarely get a projector to look as bright or vivid as a Plasma or LCD (at domestic pricing anyway). Room conditions are a major factor along with the actual ftl from the screen. Most good home projectors will manage about 16-20ftl when set up for brightness on a decent sized normal gain screen. A TV in dynamic or standard picture modes are more like 50-70ftl." Tiered seating concerns Shouldn't be any, most of the HTs I saw before designing my dad's and older brothers were like this. Screen size All depends on how bright the room you'll be watching it in is, and what ratio of light intensity you want on the screen. If you're watching it in a dark room you can easily go to a 250" screen with these projectors (though a short throw lens needed for your room) and still have an amazing picture. But for bright rooms, these models will give you the high-q picture for a ~120" screen (specs vary, you'll have to do some hw). Remember, any projector can give you a huge image, it's just the expensive ones that give you a 1080p/demo-quality picture at larger sizes whereas cheaper ones will have 'washed out'/dimmed at those sizes, and this is even further seen by the room's ambient light. Projector recommendations? Epson 8500 UB $2k Panasonic PT-AE4000 $1.5k Sharp XV-Z15000 $2k Mitsubishi HC6800 $2.5k Also, see if you can get one of the 2007 and onwards JVC DLAs, that would be great. They are the equivalent of a Mercedes S-class. Don't be afraid of buying projectors that are 2 years old, in terms of real world picture difference it's just 3-4% max to the current avg models.
Thanks for the detailed response. It's a dedicated media room so there is no ambient light. So it would seem a 100" screen is pretty big for sitting 11-12 ft away. But the website I just plugged the Epson 8500 info into, gave me that as a recommended screen size. That's massive. I guess that's the cinematic experience you're talking about. The projector prices are very reasonable. Is it the cost of the bulbs that shy people away from doing this more? Or the fact that you have to have a low lit room to really enjoy it? And I don't have any concept of the ftl. How important is that? I can see how it's important in a brighter room, but what about a dedicated media room with no/low ambient lighting?
Yes, that's the cinematic experience. But also, there's a hard-to-describe/different feeling of watching a movie on a large screen that's being projected rather than simply seeing some Blu Ray demo scene at Best Buy. It has to do with light reflected off the screen rather than directly into your eyes. They're definitely reasonable. My family's old home theater in the 90s had a CRT Runco projector (150 lbs heavy, 3 bulbs which needed to be converged, spent ~$30k to get a picture quality that had been surpassed by midrange TVs in 2005) which was a pain to maintain and use. The reputation of projectors as demanding/niche comes from that last generation of HT projectors. Projector bulbs cost ~$300 and last more than 2000 hrs on avg. If you use the projector just twice a week for a cinematic movie like Star Wars/LOTR, it should last you years. All depends on how bright you like your picture and how long you use the projector. Since your room is dark you have nothing to worry about. For the projector to be a limited-use, big-purchase item that needs a new bulb every so many years, and one that belongs in a dedicated HT (more cost) is what scares people away. Projectors can be like Ferraris: few people use them as daily drivers, instead, they drive them on weekends when the weather is beautiful or a special occasion calls for it. FTL = ANSI-lumen of the projector divided by square foot of the screen. From projector central, "foot-Lamberts (fL), which takes the screen into account and measures the total light that is being reflected back toward the audience." Your commercial theaters are somewhere around the 15 foot-lamberts area of brightness. Some less A/V-savvy friends of mine set their LCD+plasmas on full brightness, contrast, and color which is dangerous for eye strain (ever stare into a torch in the dark?). I used a radiospectrometer and special software to calibrate the projector settings to THX standards. The resulting image and audience reactions makes going the extra mile worth it. Ask your installer to use the above if possible, otherwise just eyeball it with the optimizers they provide in some demo-quality movies like Pixar's Monster's Inc. and Wall-E.
No, Marantz is different. They did merge under the same parent company in '02 but research, design, production, etc. is completely separate. DoD is correct that Marantz focuses more on music and sound quality (as evidenced by having a toroidal amp in their higher end models) whereas Denon is more about newest features, iPods, etc. Denon is another who overstates their wpc capabilities as well.
i think they're separate but i don't know. Denon makes solid stuff though. i have never been disappointed with Denon. for some reason, although they sound just as good or better than their competitors, Denon gets underrated.
