New 2.1 Gear from Denon: the S-302 and S-102 Systems

Well, Denon have made one pretty neat move at the end of this week and have announced the imminent arrival of two nifty 2.1 systems that will pose a really serious threat to the other manufacturers. Besides bringing forth new technologies, these two new models come with a very impressive heritage rooted in the Denon history and come as the offspring of a manufacturer globally renowned for the excellence of its Hi-fi gear and high-end audio equipment.

The big thing in the Denon S-302 is the DLNA technology: DLNA[admark=1] stands for Digital Living Network Alliance and is a protocol used by compatible devices for sharing JPEG photos, FLAC, AAC, MP3 WAV and WMA format files over the Ethernet and Wi-FI networks. Basically, two owners of Denon S-302 can connect to each other's unit and exchange the content they want directly from their players and without the use of a computer. Sweet!

The Denon S-302 also sports "classic" features such as an AM/FM tuner, DVD and music CDs playback and even HDMI upscaling inputs to 1080p. This unit brings a bundled iPod dock (I was kinda expecting that) with basic control functions as well as an USB port for other generic players and mass storage units. The Denon S-302 packs a 104W power and the announced price is around $2,139.

The other 2.1 system is the smaller brother, the Denon S-102: it comes with a smaller 90W power and loses the wireless capabilities and the iPod dock, even if the Apple player connectivity solution is offered as a optional expansion set. Still, the radio tuner and the full HDMI 1080p support are in their places with the Denon S-102. The announced price tag runs at $1,079. The S-302 and S-102 2.1 systems are due to hit the Japanese markets in late August and mid-September, respectively and even though there are rumors of shipping them for other countries, nothing has been officially confirmed yet.

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