I've owned a 5000 for nearly 2 years. I bought it used on ebay, couple months old, from a pawn shop. I've had zero trouble with it and no complaints. Vidoe wise, it does not do progressive scan. It does do a fine job of video on my 40" Mitiz direct view when calabrated with the Video Essetntials DVD. For auido, it has HDCD, which is a plus. It also has a standby feature so that you never have to turn the power off, and the DACs stay warm. Several times mine has been shut off accidentally, or because of a power surge, and it always takes about 3 days to reach its audio peak again. I've never checked on how long it takes to reach video peak. I use it primarily for CDs. For critical listening I prefer analogue through my Oracle limited edition Premier IV with a Ortofon MC5000 MC cartridge and ortofon step up transformer. How does it sound? very good, really. About 6 weeks ago I bought an Art DI/O and paid Boulder Cable Company to modify it, and bought Boulder's full power supply complete with Bybee filters in the power supply. That's about $600 worth of DAC. And it upsamples. The HarmonicDiscord.com site has a lot of good to say about this DAC. So I bought one to play with to see how close to analogue it will come.
I use the Denen 5000 as a transport. When I was first installing the Art, I accidentally unplubed the Denon. I A/B ed with the same line cables the signal using the Denon's and the Art's DAC. Well, the Denon stunk -- brittle and hard to listen to, because it had just been accidentally unplugged. And that's all it takes. I've played the Art nearly 24/7 since then. It's well burned in. It seems to have a hair more ease and air than the Denon. But basically I'm disappointed in the Art. I've not decided if I'll keep it yet. I've give it one more very careful listen this week end and then decide. What this exercise has taught me is that the Denon 5000 as a CD player is a very good value, I think, at anything under $1000. In fact I've checked on ebay during the last three weeks and they seem to be selling for between $400 and a high of $650. I think the Denon is a steal at all of those prices. There's some old (2+ years) reviews that praise the audio on this machine that lead me to buy it. I'm a needle disk guy who wanted a good DVD player and even more so a better CD player in the same package. But I'd only had cheap <$500 CD players to compare it too. So I've been very happy with the Denon. It's really heavy, built like a tank, good remote, doesn't eat batteries, and has a great owner's manual.
But if you need progressive scan . . . it's not for you.
