Marantz UD7006 3D Blu-ray player

The Marantz UD7006 3D Blu-ray player is a universal player that is capable of playing pretty much everything you can throw at it - from 3D Blu-ray, DVD recordables, and DivX files (whether on disc or on your home network), to the highest audio formats of SACD and DVD-Audio, plus the support to play MP3, WAV and many other files again across your network or from disc.

With all these features, its reassuring to see that quality is not affected. Picture quality on both 2D and 3D is exceptional. Colours and textures are accurately rendered, and shapes appear solid with no motion blur. The net result is a completely believable picture, whether it be on live action or animation, and a sense of being immersed fully in the picture. It wasn't too many years ago that you were looking at spending over £1,000 to reach these levels of quality, so it's impressive this machine provides the quality at this price and with all the features - plus of course 3D!

Sound quality is good to, with SACD and DVD-Audio equally well served - standard CD playback is of course as good as a CD player, and playing across the network (although dependant on the bit rate you stored the files at) is also good. Music is reproduced with energy and vitality, and the sense of listening to a dedicated CD player is very apparent - indeed, whereas most Blu-ray players leave you feeling you've been left a little short, the UD7006 really steps things up a gear and impresses.

It's not the fastest player on the block, but we can forgive that for all its positives - and of course it would be great to stream wirelessly, but to be honest best results are always from a wired connection so if you are seriously considering the investment in this Blu-ray player, we'd suggest spending that little extra to get an ethernet cable to your unit - its worth it in the long run.