Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony STR-DG810 6.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver

I got this for it's HDMI switching capability. It does this well and that's a welcome accomplishment for $300 at this point in time. There is now 1 cable! from the HD DVD player to the recvr and 1 cable! from the satellite recvr and 1 cable to the plasma monitor. That's pretty exciting in my book. The prior reviewer seemed to expect it to do analog to digital conversion of video signals. That's far from realistic at this price point, but it seems like the 910 may do that. For me this receiver replaces an older Sony ES (high end) with better amplication. One knows the 810 is a step down just from its reduced weight. But in my simple home theater context I'm very happy with this recvr's capability. Of course, I've only had it a week. It has a nice blend of features, and even at this level its manual is a bit daunting re the features to be learned. For my wife, it's handy that it allows you to rename inputs. So, instead of SAT appearing on the display I changed it to DIRECTV, and I changed VIDEO2 to EMPTY. Radio stations can be preset and named too. Regardless of which input you switch to, it remembers your last sound settings for it -- that's helpful. When you insert headphones for late night tv watching, it senses that, turns off the speakers and optimizes the sound fields for 2 channel listening. Very nice. I hope it gives me many years of service.

If you want 3 HDMI inputs and don't want upconversion of non-hdmi inputs (a mixed bag anyway) or on-screen display (something that is useful for the initial setup but that you won't use often), then this is a bargain. I think Sony aimed this receiver at the user who wants the "sweet spot" between features and cost, and this fits the bill. Good picture and sound quality and the display on the receiver front is easy to read, which makes up for the lack of on-screen display. The microphone speaker setup was easy to do, but I found the results to be a bit off, so I made minor adjustments, which was simple to do. A good receiver with advanced features for a good price. You won't find anything else with 3 hdmi inputs at this low price.

I have a Blu-Ray DVD Player, TiVo HD, and an LCD television, so I figured it was time to upgrade my sound system. Using HDMI cables to connect all components, this receiver works great and the surround sound was as good as I had hoped for (for both regular DVDs, Blu-Ray DVDs, and TV shows in HD). What I like is all of the different listening modes it offers, anywhere from basic 2-channel stereo to Dolby Pro Logic IIx to their own Sony studio pre-set movie modes. This is particularly good if you don't want to hook up all 6 speakers, it'll work just fine and still sound great with only 5 (or even just the front three and a sub woofer). The menu system is a little confusing at first, but once you get a handle on it it's easy to work with for adjusting different volume levels to your preference.

One note: when I first hooked it all up, during the quiet parts of movies I noticed an irritating hissing noise in the background. This is because I hooked up an old-school RCA cable (red and white plugs) from my TV out to the TV in on the back of the receiver. I did this only because I was short an extra HDMI cable for my XBOX 360 at the time, so I had hooked it up directly to the TV instead of running it through the receiver. Anyway, by simply removing the RCA cable the hiss was completely eliminated, so if you encounter the same problem it's probably something along those lines. Also, if I ever did want to use the TV out for some reason and send the sound to the receiver, I'd simply need to buy a digital audio cable and that would work fine (it makes sense when you think about it). For now, though, with 3 HDMI in plugs in the back, there's no reason to do so.

Another mistake a lot of people make when setting up a receiver like this is not reading the manual. Do it, you'll be glad you did. You'll also want to read your DVD player's manual (especially if you have Blu-ray) to make sure all of the settings are correct. More often than not, they won't be (you'll want to change the DVD output from PCM to Bitstream, for example) if you want to get the most out of this receiver's multi-sound-channel capabilities.

Anyway, a great price for what it can do.

This is the first amp i've bought since college, and I am overly impressed. It only does 6.1, whereas everyone at Best Buy and Circuit City will tell you that you need 7.1 for the less than 10 movies that exist with 7.1 sound. You cannot find a better price anywhere, nor can you find a better amp with 3 HDMI inputs and one output, my 360, HDDVR, and PS3 are all running into the amp through HDMI, and it works perfectly.

All in all a pretty sweet receiver. My only beefs with it are 1) My DishNetwork remote control won't control it and 2) I hooked up my TV via HDMI but my DVD player was connected to the 810 via component video cables and it wouldn't display. I had to also hook up the TV to the 810 with component cables to get video from non-HDMI sources. I *love* the autoconfig for speakers using the included microphone. I had this receiver configured and fully functional (barring the sat remote :( in less than 30 minutes.