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I was used to my old unit where a little turn of the volume knob produced pounding output, whereas this unit I have to get to about -25 before any sound comes out. Well believe it or not I bought this product last year to replace a pioneer Dolby pro-logic that I had since 1995, so you could imagine the difference in sound quality. You could imagine how silly I felt. Believe it or not but during installation I spent an additional $100 for nothing because i couldn't get any output from my unit which i thought was bad. So geek squad came to my house and charged $100 to turn my volume up for me. I'm still not using it to its full capacity but I will soon. I swear by Pioneer so i may be a little biased, but buy it you won't regret it.
I bought it for the Super Bowl and was very impressed with the sound qaulity that it produced. This receiver is complicated and it will take me a while to figure it out. I am very satisfied with it. This was an upgrade to my previous receiver. It has a lot of options that I will have to learn to use.
I thought I had done my research in purchasing my latest receiver. No audio through hdmi. The hdmi ports are very fragile.
The video conversion does no occur over HDMI. Luckily the first breakage was covered under warranty. The receiver is decent, but do not for a minute think believe all of the 4-5 star ratings it has here on Amazon.1.
In the course of one year, I have had 2 hdmi ports break. It converts component, s-video, and rca video over s-video, not HDMI. You need to read the instructions to find this nugget out.2.
3. Are you kidding me.Just a couple of things to take into consideration when comparing to similarly priced receivers from Onkyo, and Yamaha.
It does not like the HDMI connection to a Playstation 3. You get what you paid for is what comes to mind with this unit so I take full responsibility for my purchase. Sound, looks, ease of use on this unit are all very nice but there is an issue regarding the HDMI connection and it's not about the video-only pass-thru but rather the HDMI "handshake". Video "flashes" and blank video for 3 to 5 seconds is common. I've resolved this by directly making the connection from the PS3 to my Samsung LN52A650 and a separate optical connection from the PS3 to the receiver.My whole goal was to have everything switch through the 1017TXV but now, I have a big pile of remotes that I use to switch from watching Bluray DVD or playing games to watching cable.If I had a do over, I would pay extra for PS3 compatibility and true HDMI connection and upscaling to eliminate the doubling up of HDMI and audio connections.
I use optical audio and it sounds great, so that isn't an issue for me. It's like having a 200 CD changer (remember those). Well, it doesn't, as other reviewers have pointed out. The wording is confusing to the point of almost being misleading, and I'm sure more than a few people have purchased this receiver thinking it had full HDMI compatibility. Overall, this is a great unit. This unit is powerful and clean sounding even at moderately high volumes.Overall, I really have no complaints except for the HDMI thing, and I hear Pioneer has a new model coming out this summer that will solve that problem. I basically plugged in an old one with a bunch of music I like and tucked it away. This unit comes with an iPod connector and you can control your iPod from the Pioneer remote which is cool.
I suppose that is what most people want to know when shopping for a receiver. Just put it where you sit, and it will make all the adjustments for you. I did a lot of research, and I was really disappointed that (at the time of purchase) there weren't many units that could just take an HDMI signal (video and audio) and work with all the audio channels. but without the size.The sound - it's amazing. The automatic speaker calibration works great. I also love the ExtendedStereo feature which is great for programs that are just in stereo. Get some good speakers. I'm not sure if it would be worth purchasing a newer model, because the optical audio works fine for me now.
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