Good Value for Home Theater
Written: Dec 29 '01 (Updated Feb 06 '02)
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Pros: Great Sound, Nice Features, Reasonable Price
Cons: No Component Inputs, Hefty Remote, Somewhat Complicated to Set Up and Operate
The Bottom Line: This is a very nice receiver for the price. I would recommend it to anyone putting together a home theater on a limited budget.
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| ianandrach's Full Review: Sony STR-DE975 5.1 Channels Receiver |
We decided to replace our outdated Stereo receiver (Yahama) when we bought our first DVD player. After a lot of research at epinions and consumer reports, we narrowed it down to the Sony STR-DE975 or the Pioneer VSX-D810S. We were looking for something with Dolby Digital and DTS decoding that would allow us to add to and update our stereo components and that we would not outgrow too quickly. In other words, we wanted a lot of inputs and outputs of many types and as many of the newer features as we could afford.
Now, I mentioned in my "cons" section that there are no Component Video Inputs or Outputs. We didn't realize this before we purchased the unit and probably would have gone with the Pioneer if we had. Nevertheless, we don't have anything that could have used the component ins and outs anyway, so...
We decided to go with the Sony because of the Phono Inputs (could have used the Aux on the Pioneer) and because of the Multiroom capability. We haven't yet hooked up the multiroom, but it should enable one of us to watch a movie while the other listens to music elsewhere in the house (a common occurance here) if the system lives up to its claims.
Also, the STR-DE975 has a switch so you can use either 4 or 8 ohm speakers, which is nice if you already have speakers (as we did) and do not want to have to buy new ones. There is also a set of front-panel inputs for convenience when hooking up occasional equipment and there is a mute function to mute all your speakers.
The Pioneer that we were looking at made a big deal about their "Midnight Mode" sound field, and Sony didn't mention anything like that, but it does have a similar sound field. What it does is reduce the volume of loud sound effects and increase the volume of whispers so that you can watch a movie late at night without waking anybody up. On that subject, the Sony has 27 pre-programmed sound fields.
The setup took us (novices) most of a day, mainly because we didn't have all of the correct cables and because we were hooking a new DVD player into the system as well. All in all, though, the setup was relatively painless. Then the system needed to be programmed, to let it know how many and where our speakers were in relation to our viewing area and in relation to the rest of the audio and video equipment. This took about twenty minutes. Programming the remote to operate the TV, VCR, DVD player and CD player was another twenty minutes. The remote is supposed to be programmable, to allow you to teach it new commands. We haven't learned to do that quite yet, but I'm hoping I'll be able to teach it to program my VCR for recording programs. We'll see about that!(*See Update below!)
The remote itself is large. Think two hands for a small woman, or roughly 1 1/2 to 2 times the size of the average universal remote. It does not have lighted buttons, which is a drawback when watching a movie in the near-dark. Once you've set it up to recognize your components it seems able to perform all the basic functions of each (TV -change channels, adjust TV volume, mute, jump to last channel, etc; DVD - view DVD menu, choose DVD features, start, stop, pause, instant replay; CD - start, stop, skip, etc.) I am still having some trouble getting the remote to understand which component I want to control. It seems to revert back to controlling the receiver after some amount of time.
All in all, we are happy with this purchase. At $335, this receiver didn't break the bank, and gives us great sound for all the movies and CDs we watch and listen to. If the advanced features live up to our hopes and expectations, we will be two very happy campers. I would recommend this model to a friend, and I believe that it would work with pretty much any other equipment, based on the number and type of inputs and outputs. I would take into consideration, though that there are no Component Video Inputs or Outputs.
*Update: Yes, the remote is fully programmable. You can program up to 80 new commands into it, which has allowed us to replace ALL of our other four remotes with just this one! We can actually see our coffee table now! It took me about 2 hours to program the commands for my VCR, TV, CD player and DVD into the STR-DE975 remote. Now I can perform every function of my VCR, TV and CD player and almost every function of my DVD player from just one remote. I also made cheat sheets to remind myself of what features were programmed onto which buttons for each component. I know that may seem a little ridiculous, but trust me, it's important when each button performs a different function depending on which component you are trying to control!
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 335
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Epinions.com ID:
ianandrach
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 1 member
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