One of the strong points that Denon has maintained over the years is that there are few companies that come close to it when it comes to producing high fidelity home cinema sound. The company has managed to continue this rich tradition via a string of revered reference receivers. The good thing about the company is that, despite sitting pretty at the high-end of the market, it is equally concerned about the bottom end of the market and consequently is delivering a number of models that are specially aimed at the budget market. Its latest effort at the entry-level receiver, the AVR-1509 receiver, is another potential winner and is sure to give the customers a good time.

Interestingly the model takes inspiration and to an extent are modeled based on four-strong range models, which are far more expensive than the product in question, Denon AVR-2809, AVR-2309 and AVR-1909. The modestly priced AVR-1509 is capable of decoding only Dolby Digital and DTS, unlike the expensive models which decodes Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio, which makes it more suitable to systems based on a DVD player, like the Denon DVD 1740 rather than a Blu-ray deck. Then again, you needn’t worry about its connectivity as it provides you an extensive range of options including two HDMI v1.3 inputs, which gives you the discretion to alternate between two HD video sources, and is particularly helpful in case your TV features a solitary HDMI input. On the downside, it doesn’t decode Dolby Digital or DTS bitstreams carried over an HDMI connection. Moreover, being a budget receiver 1080p upscaling of SD video sources is absent as well. Apart from these glitches here and there, which is acceptable as it is all but a budget receiver, the rest of the connection is raher solid.

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