Home > Consumer Reviews > Denon AVR-3808CI 7.1-Channel Multizone Home Theater Receiver with Networking
Denon AVR-3808CI 7.1-Channel Multizone Home Theater Receiver with Networking
See it at Amazon.com for $1,149.99Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
Most Helpful First | Newest First | + Share14 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
Do not get this receiver if you own a Sony TV
(1 out of 5) by Cristian Pellegrini on Aug 25, 2008 (Tarzana, CA USA)This receiver loses synchronization with Sony TVs. It happens randomly and Denon is not doing anything about this problem.
They've released several firmware updates and some of them made the problem better and some of them made the problem worse. The latest firmware revision is the worst. It happens 2-3 times a day.
The worst part is that it didn't do it at first, then they posted a firmware update and it began doing it and there is no way to revert to an older firmware version.
Please stay away from this receiver. If I could return it I would not hesitate for a second.
They've released several firmware updates and some of them made the problem better and some of them made the problem worse. The latest firmware revision is the worst. It happens 2-3 times a day.
The worst part is that it didn't do it at first, then they posted a firmware update and it began doing it and there is no way to revert to an older firmware version.
Please stay away from this receiver. If I could return it I would not hesitate for a second.
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
This remote sucks
(4 out of 5) by E on Feb 12, 2008 (Charleston, SC)Love the Receiver but that remote is truely awful. This is my third Denon receiver in 20 years. I haven't had a problem with any of them and this one truely rocks. The Gui system is hard to use at first and so is the remote. Once you get everything set up it a great receiver. I use my old Denon remote because one sucks.
6 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
great product for the sound performance, but needs lot of work in networking front
(4 out of 5) by S. neelakandan on Jun 20, 2008 (ca, usa)Price
Bought this receiver in onecall for a price of $1399. Personally I think that this product is worth only around $1000.
Upconversion video quality
Once of the reason I bought this receiver is because of the video upconversion feature which was said to be excellent in the cnet review. I don't have any HD sources, connected my SD dishnetwork cable box and sony SD dvd player. Used the HDMI out to connect to the Samsung LN52A650 HDTV. Turned on the video upscaling feature to see how it performs with the standard definition signals but I didn't see a major difference in video upconversion quality, only a minor improvement. On the other hand the samsung hdtv was handling the Standard Definition signals very well and the picture was of very good quality (bypassing the receiver and connected the dish composite output to the hdtv composite in directly). So if you are relying on the video upconversion feature to buy this receiver don't expect much.
Sound.
Great sound output and very nice performance in the audio side. Coupled the receiver with KEF KHT3005 5.1 speaker set, the sound quality was phenominal. Needed to go through the Audessey AutoSetup , but I had to set the crossover frequency manually in the receiver to around 100HZ to get good performance from the subwoofer. Also increased the sub volume manually in the receiver to more sound. In conclusion for sound this is a great receiver.
Network Streaming and connectivity.
Setting up network with this receiver turned out to be very painful experience. My entertainment set is in Family Room which doesn't have a ethernet connection to connect to this receiver. Used one of my old Linksys WRT54GS wireless router to run DD-WRT firmware to turn the wireless access point to work as a client bridge. So that I can connect the linksys router to work as a wireless receiver and hook up the denon 3808ci receiver to connect to this client bridge. After I hooked up the receiver the receiver was having trouble to connect to the network, it couldn't pull a ip address from the network. The a/v receiver became very slow and it took more than 5 seconds to navigate between each menu items. When I connect the a/v receiver to the wired network the a/v receiver was immediately assigned a network ip address and everything works fine. To debug connected my samsung LN52A650 HDTV to the client bridge it immediately reported that no DNS server assigned and no DHCP server was available. I liked the "Test Connection" feature of the samsung as opposed to nothing in the denon.
Now configured the A/V receiver to set DHCP to OFF and manually assigned a ip address and entered all the network details like subnet mask and DNS server info. Powercycled the receiver and now it was able to obtain a ipaddress. Frustrating and I wasted almost a day to figure this out.
As soon as it connected to the network I was able to see the receiver in the www.radiodenon.com website with the receivers MAC address. Signed up in radiodenon and added few stations in my list. It immediately showed up in the A/V receiver. But when I tried to play one of the station the receiver was complaining "Track Not Found" Error. Called Denon tech support and after 1 hour of wait I was able to get a support person. Explained that I can't play a radio station(WMA encoding, but streaming in windows media player protocol MMS) in the receiver he took so much of time to even locate the station. After a while he told me that this station cannot be played in the receiver because it needs a Windows Media Player in the receiver. I was wondering why the receiver cannot understand the WMA encoding. I asked why, when the denon manuals say that all WMA and MP3 stations can be played, but he couldn't properly tell a reason but keep on telling me that it needs a windows media player in the receiver which is not possible.
Later I figured out that the wma stations which is using mms as a streaming protocol cannot be played in this a/v receiver because the a/v receiver doesn't support the mms protocol as it supports only RTSP.
On the other side I tried to play the music files stored on my laptop.
The setup was like this
DLink Wireless Router
|
|
---> Laptop connected to this network.
---> Linksys wireless router acting as client
bridget ___> A/V Receiver
Powered the A/V receiver , powered my laptop , the a/v receiver wasn't able to locate the laptop connected to the network. With trial and error I found out that I need to switch on my laptop first and then power the A/V receiver, after couple of minutes the receiver was able to locate the laptop and I was able to play the music files stored on my laptop.
Though one has to remember that windows media player 11 must be istalled and permission must be granted to the a/v receiver to access the music file folders from your system.
Overall , great sounding product with mediocore network features and very bad network usability. I was looking for the comparable sony STR-DA5300ES but dropped it from my list since it doesn't have a network connectivity :-(
Bought this receiver in onecall for a price of $1399. Personally I think that this product is worth only around $1000.
Upconversion video quality
Once of the reason I bought this receiver is because of the video upconversion feature which was said to be excellent in the cnet review. I don't have any HD sources, connected my SD dishnetwork cable box and sony SD dvd player. Used the HDMI out to connect to the Samsung LN52A650 HDTV. Turned on the video upscaling feature to see how it performs with the standard definition signals but I didn't see a major difference in video upconversion quality, only a minor improvement. On the other hand the samsung hdtv was handling the Standard Definition signals very well and the picture was of very good quality (bypassing the receiver and connected the dish composite output to the hdtv composite in directly). So if you are relying on the video upconversion feature to buy this receiver don't expect much.
Sound.
Great sound output and very nice performance in the audio side. Coupled the receiver with KEF KHT3005 5.1 speaker set, the sound quality was phenominal. Needed to go through the Audessey AutoSetup , but I had to set the crossover frequency manually in the receiver to around 100HZ to get good performance from the subwoofer. Also increased the sub volume manually in the receiver to more sound. In conclusion for sound this is a great receiver.
Network Streaming and connectivity.
Setting up network with this receiver turned out to be very painful experience. My entertainment set is in Family Room which doesn't have a ethernet connection to connect to this receiver. Used one of my old Linksys WRT54GS wireless router to run DD-WRT firmware to turn the wireless access point to work as a client bridge. So that I can connect the linksys router to work as a wireless receiver and hook up the denon 3808ci receiver to connect to this client bridge. After I hooked up the receiver the receiver was having trouble to connect to the network, it couldn't pull a ip address from the network. The a/v receiver became very slow and it took more than 5 seconds to navigate between each menu items. When I connect the a/v receiver to the wired network the a/v receiver was immediately assigned a network ip address and everything works fine. To debug connected my samsung LN52A650 HDTV to the client bridge it immediately reported that no DNS server assigned and no DHCP server was available. I liked the "Test Connection" feature of the samsung as opposed to nothing in the denon.
Now configured the A/V receiver to set DHCP to OFF and manually assigned a ip address and entered all the network details like subnet mask and DNS server info. Powercycled the receiver and now it was able to obtain a ipaddress. Frustrating and I wasted almost a day to figure this out.
As soon as it connected to the network I was able to see the receiver in the www.radiodenon.com website with the receivers MAC address. Signed up in radiodenon and added few stations in my list. It immediately showed up in the A/V receiver. But when I tried to play one of the station the receiver was complaining "Track Not Found" Error. Called Denon tech support and after 1 hour of wait I was able to get a support person. Explained that I can't play a radio station(WMA encoding, but streaming in windows media player protocol MMS) in the receiver he took so much of time to even locate the station. After a while he told me that this station cannot be played in the receiver because it needs a Windows Media Player in the receiver. I was wondering why the receiver cannot understand the WMA encoding. I asked why, when the denon manuals say that all WMA and MP3 stations can be played, but he couldn't properly tell a reason but keep on telling me that it needs a windows media player in the receiver which is not possible.
Later I figured out that the wma stations which is using mms as a streaming protocol cannot be played in this a/v receiver because the a/v receiver doesn't support the mms protocol as it supports only RTSP.
On the other side I tried to play the music files stored on my laptop.
The setup was like this
DLink Wireless Router
|
|
---> Laptop connected to this network.
---> Linksys wireless router acting as client
bridget ___> A/V Receiver
Powered the A/V receiver , powered my laptop , the a/v receiver wasn't able to locate the laptop connected to the network. With trial and error I found out that I need to switch on my laptop first and then power the A/V receiver, after couple of minutes the receiver was able to locate the laptop and I was able to play the music files stored on my laptop.
Though one has to remember that windows media player 11 must be istalled and permission must be granted to the a/v receiver to access the music file folders from your system.
Overall , great sounding product with mediocore network features and very bad network usability. I was looking for the comparable sony STR-DA5300ES but dropped it from my list since it doesn't have a network connectivity :-(
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
user unfriendly
(1 out of 5) by mhow on Oct 24, 2009 (ca usa)Don't ever think that once you get this unit that you'll ever figure it out... you won't. It has to be the most unfriendly user interface that I've come across. You have to have the manual to refer to constantly. Sounds are good, power good, controls BAD! Two remotes one does everthing...overwhelming, you need the manual to use it. The other remote, easy to use but not backlit and no power button, what were they thinking? When listening to music or video and I hit the wrong button I don't want to spend a half hour to get the damn thing back to its original settings. I feel It's a big pain in the butt! Any one want to buy mine? Cheap.