A great receiver for all your components!
Written: Nov 02 '01
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Handles many components; great sound quality; full-featured two-way remote.
Cons: Some of the sound field options produce disappointing results.
The Bottom Line: This receiver is powerful and delivers great sound and video quality. If you have many components in your system, then this receiver deserves consideration.
|
|
|
| dmacioce's Full Review: Sony CCD-TRV138 Hi-8 Analog Camcorder |
In contrast to Rangernwfl, I have had a great experience with the Sony STR-DE935. I bought this unit back in September of 1999, and it has served me faithfully under somewhat heavy use over the course of the past two years. It is the best receiver I have ever had, and I expect it will continue to serve me for the next few years. I highly recommend it.
There were a few factors that influenced my decision to purchase the Sony STR-DE935: 1) Sony brand, and the fact that my other components are Sony; 2) this unit can handle many many components, and therefore can grow with my entertainment needs; 3) DTS decoder and Dolby Pro Logic and Dolby Digital surround sound capabilities.
The unit features Digital Cinema Sound and Virtual 3D Sound programs, which create various audio effects. Some of these are very good to use when watching video tapes that have only stereo audio tracks. Using these effects provides a decent surround sound experience. On the other hand, some programs are not so good, such as "Stadium" and "Arena" -- I've tried using these for watching football and baseball games, but I've found that "Disco" sounds closer to the experience of being at a ball game. Nevertheless, this feature is nice to have.
I primarily use this receiver for my home theater system, although I do use it to listen to CDs and radio broadcasts as well. What I like most about this receiver is that it has plenty of channels to hook up all my devices, and the sound quality is excellent.
One of the nice things about this receiver (which is common to most of the Sony receivers) is the arrangement of buttons and the display panel on the face of the Receiver. The channel selection buttons are conveniently arranged in two rows, with buttons for video device (eg, VCR, TV, DVD, etc) channels on the top row, and buttons for audio device (eg, Tape, CD, MD, etc) channels on the bottom row. The LED panel displays messages that tell you which sound field is currently selected, what device is selected, etc.
I have found the two-way remote control that comes with the unit to be very functional, although it took me a while to get used to it. After playing around with it, I found that it can control nearly all of my devices (except for TiVo). It is nice to be able to control the DVD Player, the VCR, the TV, the Cable Box, the CD Player, and the Receiver (including tuning radio stations) with a single remote. I have only three complaints with the remote: 1) it is sometimes slow when receiving the IR signal from the receiver; 2) although the LCD display lights up, so that you can read it in the dark, the buttons do not glow, so it is sometimes difficult to perform some functions in the dark (as when you're doing the home theater thing); and 3) the remote can control only one device at a time, so if you need to perform multiple operations, it requires additional keystrokes to select the device you want to control from the LCD menu. One way to get around the last point is to program Macros for common functions, and the remote allows you to program 3 macros.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 500
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
dmacioce
|
|
Member: Daniel Macioce
Location: Palmdale, CA, USA
Reviews written: 9
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
I enjoy fishing, photography, computers, and Elizabethan literature.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.