Arcam has finally bitten the bullet by introducing an upgraded DVD player which is as near to being universal as the company has designed.

First and foremost the DV137 is a DVD player, and in common with all such players it is also capable of playing CDs, but, in this case, to a standard that is comparable to an audiophile grade disc spinner. It's also a full-on multichannel DVD-Audio player, but unlike its predecessors that come from this stable, this is the first previously united in supporting DVD-A to the exclusion of SACD.

When the Arcam DV137 was first demonstrated to us it was capable of full multichannel SACD replay, but this lasted just as long as it took to realise that there were severe distortion problems with the deck.

If this problem can be resolved, a firmware update will be issued and owners of DV137s will be able to get the feature back. But for the moment the company is not making any promises. This is a shame as multichannel SACDs are much more widely available than the DVD-A equivalent.

Because Arcam designs its own DVD players from the ground up, it has an unusual freedom to choose who it wants as its technology partners. For this model, Arcam has continued to maintain its association with Zoran, and this product is the launch vehicle for the Zoran Vaddis 888S processor, which handles all the format compatibility processing.

It is coupled here with broadcast quality 11-bit 216MHz video DACs from Analogue Devices. One of the main talking points will be the high- performance Anchor Bay ABT1010 10-bit video upscaler, which takes the 480p or 576p output from disc, and outputs a 720p, 768p or 1080i/p signal across the HDMI link (along with high-resolution multichannel audio).

The native resolution for many LCD panel displays is 768p (1366 x 768 pixels progressive). Using HDMI, the player will auto- negotiate the best available common settings with the chosen display. In addition, Arcam's Mask of SilenceĀ EMC damping technology reduces internally radiated electrical noise that would otherwise mask fine detail.

Other improvements include a colour OSD menu system with setup calibration wizard, and a new more ergonomically sound remote control.

The player can deliver stereo audio and composite or RGB video at the same time as multichannel audio and HDMI digital video, useful say, for playing into a second room.

There are a number of other features aimed at making the player suitable for multiroom systems such as its ability to be used with AMX or Crestron controllers. It is also well endowed with secondary features, such as powerful speaker and bass management, adjustable lip sync and an enhanced buffer memory to eliminate the gap when changing layers on disc.

The Arcam delivers an impressive performance on screen. The picture it generates is stable down to the last pixel when it is examined closely on a big screen. Edges are crisp too, but there's no pretence of HD standard resolving power - you won't see every last blade of grass on a lawn, which is the subject of one particularly telling screen on one standard test disc used in this review.

Sharpness is reduced to the level that stops just short of highlighting unwelcome MPEG artefacts, specifically including chroma upsampling error (CUE) according to Arcam, so everything appears to flow naturally and organically.