Price Paid:  $550.00 from Authorized Dealer

Summary:
Nice simple unit at relatively good price. When hot it seems to want to skip on poorer quality CDs. I have physically seperated this unit a few inches more from the other components and it seems to have solved the problem, but only time will tell (only 2 months old.)

Strengths:
Simple, easy-to-use, low profile unit

Weaknesses:
Can skip or get stuck on some DVDs and CDs when running hot; flimsy tray

Similar Products Used:
Denon, Sony, Harman Kardon

Price Paid:  $700.00

Summary:
I very happy with the player, the sound and picture quality is good! I had a lot of problems with rented CDs. If the player encounters a scratch, it just stop for a while and then skips to the next chapter. Very irritating. My player doesn't play certain chapters of the brand new Jurassic Park and The Lost World (R2). I don't know why. The retailer told me it has something to do with the fact that they are dual layer. But it plays the Matrix as well (also dual layer).

Strengths:
Picture quality, design

Weaknesses:
playback of rented DVDs and some dual layer DVDs

Summary:
When I went out in search of a DVD player I decided to go for the DV7000. Unfortunately they didn't have a champagne version in stock so I was offered to use a DV890 until the other one would come in. I have been using it for 2 months now and am pretty pleased with it. Picture is very clear and sharp. Sound quality for DVD's is very good and the cd quality was better than I expected after reading a lot of negative stories about CD's on DVD players. It's not as good as my other CD-player but still it's decent on my Musical Fidelity X-A1. So unless you're quite picky about the sound quality or don't want a lot of devices in your room you might want to check this player out.

Downside of this player is the cheesy tray. Can't say I found it very noisy, but it does have a cheap feeling to it. It works, but I believe that Marantz could have done better on this point. Another thing that I had problems with (although I don't know if it's inherent to this model or just this particular player) is that once in a while the player would suddenly stop playing. This happened on DVD's as well as CD's and it's pretty annoying. Hopefully it is just this one!

Over all I think it's good value for money. If you don't have a big budget, or want to wait and see what else the future has in store it is definately worth checking it out.

Other components in my system:

Musical Fidelity X-A1
Marantz SR7000 dolby receiver
Marantz CD-67SE (modified)
Elipson 1402 fronts
Boheme SL3 center
Spendor 2020 rears
Kimber 4TC speaker cable

Strengths:
Sound/Video quality, plays CD-R/RW

Weaknesses:
Tray is not very sturdy

Similar Products Used:
None sofar

Summary:
I have the Marantz dvd-890 about a half year now, and i must say it's a very good player...Exept the transport is very noisy.I heard that this transport is used also in a philips dvd-player, which has the same problems... Overall i find the imagequality very fine( better than my vcc2000)
The sound quality is for movie-use good enough..
the rest of my equipment:
loewe xelos
dali-center speaker
tannoy M1 rear
audiostatic es 100 front
audiostatic pdsw sub
onkyo es 600 pro-logic processor
rotel rha/b pre/power amps.
marantz cd 16
mf xdac/xpsu/x10d
MIT interconnects.
and a kenwood tuner/philips 977 record player

Strengths:
image quality, sound quality

Weaknesses:
noisy transport.

Similar Products Used:
none

Summary:
It's a very good DVD player, but has a ticking sound on certain DVDs and the on board DD decoder clips when you set the center channel speaker to small.

After getting a separate DD/DTS decoder, I've eliminated the problematic on board decoder and am able to enjoy the machine. But the ticking of the transport still is somewhat annoying during quite passages of films.

If you can overlook these two issues, then it's a very good player to have.

Strengths:
Sound and Picture quality are very good.

Weaknesses:
Noisy transport, and speaker managment distorts sound when center speaker is set to small.