Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony HT-DDW750S Home Theatre System Receiver 80W x 5ch

As a first time buyer of Dolby Digital Surround sound, I spent a good time pouring over magazine artilces, and with a budget of £300-400 found very little information in the usual mags, as they seem to favour products with another zero on my budget. So with no real review or a chance to try out the system up front, I thought that Sony would not let me down, so went for it. Glad I did, the amp is a well built unit, with 2 optical connections (enough for me), coax cable was included, so plugged it all together and all working. Plenty of analogue inputs also, Video In/Out, Video 2, etc. Also FM/AM tuner built in.

So after some key speaker placement then it's time to test it with The Matrix DVD, superb sound quality, bass unit (though a little large compared to some slimmer units) does provide bass aplenty, so much so 1/4 bass level is enough for most films, room size would have a bearing on the setting though. Bass sounded controlled and not boomy. Dolby digital much better than Dolby Pro Logic II, watching TV on the latter just makes me want to watch a DVD instead.

Remote control is not the best, but considering the number of buttons on it is a good design. Was able to program it to use my Pioneer 360S DVD player. TV is Sony so can control that by default.

Standard Speaker cable was bundled, 2 longer lengths for rears.

For less than £260 this is a bargain, RRP is £350 which is what Argos currently sell it for. The package makes sense for the future also, unlike DVD/Speaker packages I can upgrade the Amp/Speakers/SubW/DVD at any time, if one gets a fault I can replace the one item.