A Non-functional Receiver
Pros:
Good HDMI Switching, lots of features
Cons:
It doesn't work, poor sound quality
The Bottom Line:
Due to the non-functional Component IN's and poor sound quality, I could not recommend this product.
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Overall Rating:
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Author's Review
The TX-SR606 is chock full of features. Up-scaling video to 1080i, up-converting output to HDMI. We bought it for the HDMI switching and to eliminate over half of the cables hanging from our Sony LCD, which it did fantastically. If only it would have worked. A Wii hooked up to Component 1 IN did not get transmitted to the TV either by HDMI or by Component OUT. Trying it on Component 2 IN made no difference. Connecting it directly to the TV verified that the Wii and its component feed worked properly. You can select either of the component IN's as the source, and assign them to an audio source and button on the remote, but you do not have an option in any of the menus to set the output path and no path seemed to work at all. In the receiver's favor, the HDMI switching did work perfectly with three HDMI sources connected.
The sound of the 606 proved to be quite bright, almost tinny compared to our 6 year old warm sounding Denon AVR-1803. The Audyssey auto speaker setup, sent the front sound almost equally to all three front speakers instead of concentrating speech on the center speaker which is designed specifically for clear speech. This made for a more muddled speech quality. It also made the surrounds a good bit louder than manual setup using a sound meter, resulting in some speech being drowned out by surround effects. We were not impressed by the sound quality as compared to an older Denon, and even less impressed by a non-working Component IN.
The remote was also somewhat strange in that you had to keep selecting the Receiver button to send commands to the receiver as opposed to the TV, the other selection button. Receiver should be the default selection on a receiver's remote and you should not have to hit two buttons to perform an action on the receiver. This in turn made the receiver not work on a Harmony 880 remote as programmed in by Logitech. Each command would have to be specially programmed as a macro as each required more than one button press.
All of these combined resulted in the low score I have given this receiver. Despite glowing reviews by most other people, there were too many issues with the receiver to warrant more than two stars.
