6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Disappointing for a "high end" unit
Date of Review: Nov 16, 2007
The Bottom Line: There are better choices, because the scaling and bass management flaws disqualifies too many users.
As a top-of-the-line unit from Sony (for a year, until the 5300 came out, which shares some of these problems), this unit should really give you audio/video bliss. It features many nice features, like video scaling to HDMI, decoding of many surround sound formats, ability to use with two- and three-zone set-ups, and even ability to play back from USB. Most of these features work as advertized, although some of them are more gimmicky than useful. Examples of useless features are the various "sound environments" you can add, such as Church or Stadium; the production engineer already added ambience to the music or movie you're listening to, and any more will just muddy the sound.
This receiver will switch video, supports a one-cable display solution, and will power your speakers. So far, so good. However, it has several annoying problems:
1) Even if your speakers are set to LARGE, it feeds the subwoofer with program material. This leads to too strong bass. You can't adjust it on the sub or the receiver, because then the LFE channel will not have the right level. The only solution is to set your speakers to SMALL and set a low cut-off frequency. This is borderline unacceptable.
2) Upscaling analog signals seems to only support 16:9. Any 4:3 signals will be stretched to 16:9, and because it's HDMI in on the TV, you can't un-stretch it there. This is borderline unacceptable.
3) I'm using this as a pre/pro with separately amplified speakers. However, when playing loud, the receiver still turns off for overload protection, even though the amps are not loaded. It's drawing power and generating heat even when not loaded.
4) The GUI is not as useful as I thought it would be, because it doesn't integrate with HDMI.
5) It only has 3 HDMI inputs, which is too few for a modern system (game consoles, HD boxes and TiVos, HTPCs, upscaling DVD players, etc). This was fixed on the 5300.
Early HDMI units had problems with HDCP handshakes. I think that's not a problem with this receiver. I use this device with a Mac Mini for HTPC, a PS/3 and an S3 TiVo for HDMI inputs. It displays to a Sharp Aquos LC52D92U, and I have never had any handshaking issues.
