The Marantz is a very stylish player with a curved fascia that stands out amongst many rectangular players with little focus on design. It is a heavy, solid player sits a bit taller than most. From a build perspective, height does provide a bit more room for spatial layout and possibly avoids heat accomodating a smaller area.

The player is responsive, but not outstandingly fast. Powered off eject times are roughly 13-15 seconds and non-java and java-light discs load in 20 to 40 seconds. Heavy Java discs around 1 minute.

The player is profile 2.0 for internet-based special features, which creates a spandrel in making firmware updates easy via the internet.

Although the player is nearly identical to the Denon DBP-2010CI, I have found the Marantz BD7004 to be devoid of any weird handshake issues that caused brief green flashes at power up.

DVD upscaling is top notch with the ABT VRS scaling chip. I would venture to say that it is 98% of the Oppo’s performance for normal content. The Oppo’s chip (ABT 2010) is a bit better at recognizing obscure film cadences used in animation and anime, but the ABT 1030 chip in the 7004 does an exceptional job at detail reproduction, color accuracy, and motion. The menus allow for detail PQ tweaking including NR, gamma, brightness and contrast (the menu gui is a bit dated). BD playback is excellent.

The player gains a competitive advantage in audio performance. The 7.1 CH analogue output is terrific and has speaker settings and distances, but does not allow one to set the crossover annoyingly. The DACs are tremendous and deliver very clean and warm sound.

This player is truly a worthy competitor to the Oppo when you factor in the three year warranty and RS 232, but push your local dealer for a more realistic price.