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Sony STR-DG910 7.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver
See it at Amazon.com for $420.00Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
Thumbs Up
(5 out of 5) by Z. Snyder on Jun 1, 2007 (SFCA)Easy to set up, the digital cinema auto calibration worked well although it told me my right front speaker was out of phase even though it's not.
The description lists two HDMI in but there are actually three. I used one port for my PVR and the standard definition channels look better now. My old receiver didn't have a port for digital audio in so watching broadcasts in 5.1 surround is a big plus.
The remote is huge. I just tossed it back in the box and set up my Harmony 550 to take care of the most used functions.
For $499.99, this a great deal on a 7.1 surround receiver with 3 HDMI in's and 700+ watts of power.
The description lists two HDMI in but there are actually three. I used one port for my PVR and the standard definition channels look better now. My old receiver didn't have a port for digital audio in so watching broadcasts in 5.1 surround is a big plus.
The remote is huge. I just tossed it back in the box and set up my Harmony 550 to take care of the most used functions.
For $499.99, this a great deal on a 7.1 surround receiver with 3 HDMI in's and 700+ watts of power.
44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
Great HDMI switcher/converter
(5 out of 5) by Darren Sillett on Jul 23, 2007 (Seattle, WA USA)This is a great receiver for the price. I have it connected to 3 HDMI sources (PlayStation 3 (60GB), DirecTV HD DVR and a DVD player) and two optical sources (Xbox 360 Console Includes 20GB Hard Drive and a TiVo).
All sources sound great and there were no problems with sound lag when viewing on the output Panasonic plasma TV. The receiver runs relatively cool for a device like this (it is a lot cooler than my older Sony receiver). It also works perfectly well with my Logitech Harmony remote.
Minor niggles: the menu system (especially the OSD) is fairly tedious to navigate through and the indicator light for "digital surround" is a little to small and hard to see from an above angle.
All sources sound great and there were no problems with sound lag when viewing on the output Panasonic plasma TV. The receiver runs relatively cool for a device like this (it is a lot cooler than my older Sony receiver). It also works perfectly well with my Logitech Harmony remote.
Minor niggles: the menu system (especially the OSD) is fairly tedious to navigate through and the indicator light for "digital surround" is a little to small and hard to see from an above angle.
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent Receiver for the price
(5 out of 5) by K. Tran on Jun 10, 2007 (Temple City, CA USA)If you own any Hi-Def players such as the blu-ray or HD DVD, you must have one of these. It is priced lower than the Onkyo 605 and it can play multichannel PCM. I've connected this receiver to both my PS3 and my toshiba HD DVD XA2. It plays everthing perfectly. It also upconverts anything to 1080p through HDMI output. I am very satisfied with this player.
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
A good receiver, but you should know...
(4 out of 5) by M.D.C. on Feb 2, 2008 (San Diego, CA)UPDATED 12/7
OK.
First, I bought this receiver from CCity, not Amazon, because I was impatient and didn't want to wait for it to be shipped. Besides, I knew they'd use FedEx and leave it sitting out in a plain box ready for theft.
Anyway...I needed a receiver to replace my old receiver. The first reason was because I have a ton of electronic components that needed to be hooked up, of various connection qualities and needed to consolidate. For the record I have:
- HD-DVR (supports HDMI but was using Component and optical)
- 360 (supports Component, but was using VGA and optical)
- PS3 (using HDMI)
- Wii (using Component)
You can imagine how many cords were all over the place.
I did a lot of research and stumbled across this nice little expensive unit. The one thing that caught my eye about it was the fact that it not only transcoded HDMI, it also upconverted source signals to the highest resolution possible regardless of what that source cable was. That meant that I could have 5 devices plugged into the receiver and just one HDMI cable out to my TV and be fine in the knowledge that it's the maximum resolution it can be. AWESOME.
So now my setup looks like this:
- HD-DVR (using HDMI)
- PS3 (using HDMI)
- 360 (using Component/optical and upconverted through HDMI)
- Wii (using Component and upconverted through HDMI)
- Receiver outputs through HDMI and I use it to switch input signals, the TV only uses on and off.
Should I decide to invest in an Elite 360, I'll then have HDMI there, which is even less cabling. Then the only cable nightmare is the Wii, which I suppose I can't do anything about.
It's really nice because I really only use two remotes instead of 5 (no, I'm not kidding, I had 5 remotes going on).
However, it does have some flaws.
- The HDMI inputs are named the same as some of the Component/Composite inputs. Meaning I can't have the PS3 on HDMI Video 2 and the 360 on Component Video 2. I'm sure I could alternate the two, but I would much rather the HDMI inputs have their own dedicated selections.
- The receiver's remote is unwieldy and confusing. Way too many buttons, I mean you have to click three different buttons just to set subwoofer level.
- The HDMI upconversion doesn't always play nice with DirecTV's HR20 HD-DVR. If the HR20 is turned on before the receiver, the receiver won't output all colors to the TV, so it'll show up pink/green. The receiver has to be powered on first, then the HR20. the HR20 might just be picky, but I think it shouldn't matter in either case.
- I had some issues getting the 360 to play nice with the receiver. I actually had to turn the little switch on the component cables to the non-HD setting to get it to work. Which is weird, because it IS in HD.
- I would have liked some sort of attenuation setting, so I could drop the volume to bare minimum with a single button press (in the case of phone calls, visitors, etc).
All in all, yes I do recommend this receiver as a great value, but then again, a receiver is only as good as your setup/speakers/etc.
UPDATE: I finally experienced my first HDMI-related issue. The receiver keeps defaulting itself to PCM, not recognizing DTS, Dolby Digital 5.1 or any digital audio sound. I have to power it off and back on to get it to process the sound input properly. Even if I leave the receiver on, it still does the same thing. Also, when I power it off and back on, instead of remembering what input it was on last, it goes back to "TV", which nothing is connected to. It's quite annoying, to be sure.
UPDATE 2: I figured out the PCM issue. For whatever reason, it requires Bitstream in order to acknowledge any digital signal. The 360 works fine. It's the PS3 and the DirecTV receiver that have the issue. Also, the automatic TV setting seems to have been a symptom of my TV (Samsung DLP...I wrote a review about it) and automatically doing something with the HDMI. As to the first problem, the deal with Bitstream is that Blu-ray apparently is optimal with Linear PCM...so I'd have to change it if I were watching a DVD vs. a Blu-ray. I don't know how to deal with that.
UPDATE 3: Figured out the problem with the HDMI when I was shifting stuff around on my power supply unit. Apparently, the receiver has an option to either (A) output sound to the TV and speakers, or (B) send to the speakers only. The receiver was set to option A. My new Samsung 61' LED DLP apparently doesn't like receiving digital audio, so the receiver was converting it to PCM. Changing that option to B (which is what it should have been all along) resolved it, and digital surround works perfectly now.
OK.
First, I bought this receiver from CCity, not Amazon, because I was impatient and didn't want to wait for it to be shipped. Besides, I knew they'd use FedEx and leave it sitting out in a plain box ready for theft.
Anyway...I needed a receiver to replace my old receiver. The first reason was because I have a ton of electronic components that needed to be hooked up, of various connection qualities and needed to consolidate. For the record I have:
- HD-DVR (supports HDMI but was using Component and optical)
- 360 (supports Component, but was using VGA and optical)
- PS3 (using HDMI)
- Wii (using Component)
You can imagine how many cords were all over the place.
I did a lot of research and stumbled across this nice little expensive unit. The one thing that caught my eye about it was the fact that it not only transcoded HDMI, it also upconverted source signals to the highest resolution possible regardless of what that source cable was. That meant that I could have 5 devices plugged into the receiver and just one HDMI cable out to my TV and be fine in the knowledge that it's the maximum resolution it can be. AWESOME.
So now my setup looks like this:
- HD-DVR (using HDMI)
- PS3 (using HDMI)
- 360 (using Component/optical and upconverted through HDMI)
- Wii (using Component and upconverted through HDMI)
- Receiver outputs through HDMI and I use it to switch input signals, the TV only uses on and off.
Should I decide to invest in an Elite 360, I'll then have HDMI there, which is even less cabling. Then the only cable nightmare is the Wii, which I suppose I can't do anything about.
It's really nice because I really only use two remotes instead of 5 (no, I'm not kidding, I had 5 remotes going on).
However, it does have some flaws.
- The HDMI inputs are named the same as some of the Component/Composite inputs. Meaning I can't have the PS3 on HDMI Video 2 and the 360 on Component Video 2. I'm sure I could alternate the two, but I would much rather the HDMI inputs have their own dedicated selections.
- The receiver's remote is unwieldy and confusing. Way too many buttons, I mean you have to click three different buttons just to set subwoofer level.
- The HDMI upconversion doesn't always play nice with DirecTV's HR20 HD-DVR. If the HR20 is turned on before the receiver, the receiver won't output all colors to the TV, so it'll show up pink/green. The receiver has to be powered on first, then the HR20. the HR20 might just be picky, but I think it shouldn't matter in either case.
- I had some issues getting the 360 to play nice with the receiver. I actually had to turn the little switch on the component cables to the non-HD setting to get it to work. Which is weird, because it IS in HD.
- I would have liked some sort of attenuation setting, so I could drop the volume to bare minimum with a single button press (in the case of phone calls, visitors, etc).
All in all, yes I do recommend this receiver as a great value, but then again, a receiver is only as good as your setup/speakers/etc.
UPDATE: I finally experienced my first HDMI-related issue. The receiver keeps defaulting itself to PCM, not recognizing DTS, Dolby Digital 5.1 or any digital audio sound. I have to power it off and back on to get it to process the sound input properly. Even if I leave the receiver on, it still does the same thing. Also, when I power it off and back on, instead of remembering what input it was on last, it goes back to "TV", which nothing is connected to. It's quite annoying, to be sure.
UPDATE 2: I figured out the PCM issue. For whatever reason, it requires Bitstream in order to acknowledge any digital signal. The 360 works fine. It's the PS3 and the DirecTV receiver that have the issue. Also, the automatic TV setting seems to have been a symptom of my TV (Samsung DLP...I wrote a review about it) and automatically doing something with the HDMI. As to the first problem, the deal with Bitstream is that Blu-ray apparently is optimal with Linear PCM...so I'd have to change it if I were watching a DVD vs. a Blu-ray. I don't know how to deal with that.
UPDATE 3: Figured out the problem with the HDMI when I was shifting stuff around on my power supply unit. Apparently, the receiver has an option to either (A) output sound to the TV and speakers, or (B) send to the speakers only. The receiver was set to option A. My new Samsung 61' LED DLP apparently doesn't like receiving digital audio, so the receiver was converting it to PCM. Changing that option to B (which is what it should have been all along) resolved it, and digital surround works perfectly now.
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
An Amazing A/V Manager!
(5 out of 5) by Benjamin Bursae on Sep 21, 2007 (Fredericksburg, VA)This receiver has awesome functionality with any brand of TV, satellite/cable, DVD, BD, etc. It can be programmed to turn on and shut off with the TV, and its THREE HDMI inputs turn it into an awesome TV input selector switch, allowing you to have hi-def sat/cable, DVD w/upconversion or BD, and a game system (or BD). This thing has it all. And the 7.1Ch sound makes for an immersive viewing experience! Buy this receiver - it is well worth the money!