The problem with these 7.1 receivers is… what exactly am I supposed to listen to on them? There’s nothing encoded on 7.1!
Sony still makes the best TVs. They don’t sell as many as the cheaper brands like Samsung and Vizio, but the quality is better and the picture is better.
My Sony TV has been crap. Class action lawsuit for the picture engine, one of two HDMI’s dead on arrival and the second one dead after 3 years. Sony makes great professional grade products and disposable consumer grade products.
DTS Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD both support 7.1, and there are some movies encoded with it on Blu-ray. There aren’t a lot of them, but big blockbuster movies are increasingly released with 7.1 soundtracks.
Here is a list of discs with lossless 7.1 sound.
If you go with rear surround speakers, the signal processing can spread the sound field and do a pretty good job of using them.
This receiver has Dolby IIz, so you can set up left and right height speakers instead of rear surround.
Some receivers (I don’t know about this one) allow the two extra channels to be used to bi-amp the main speakers, if the speakers support that.
Some receivers (I don’t know about this one) allow the two extra channels to be used as Zone 2, so you can put speakers on the deck or in the kitchen or wherever you want to run cables and play a different source there.
You may have a valid point; however, 5.1 is still very much alive. It’s nice to know the product will still support 7.1 if you happen to stumble across that special movie. A quick search for 1.7 encoded movies yields a vast list available on bluray discs. If in doubt, check again… This particular Sony receiver is not overly powerfull, but it will still put a smile on the face of the user when set up properly.
can I play my records???found some new receivers not able to have high enough input to hear the music!! any answers??
Weird, this is a 2011 model and it does not appear to be very popular. There is very little in the way of reviews out there for it.
Spec wise I can’t see anything to complain about, it has a feature set that matches most of today’s consumer 7.1 receivers minus network connectivity. I recently plunked down $270ish on yamahas rx-v375 because my old sony 2 channel receiver of 15+ years had a broken connection in it that was sending raw power to the right speaker.
That said what I learned about receivers when researching what to replace it with was that a) they aren’t cheap and b) HDMI switch boards aren’t all built as good as the sound components.
I actually plunked down the cash on a 4 year warranty at best buy for my new yamaha because if it breaks, there is no “Oh I’ll just get the same one, it should be dirt cheap 3 years from now”. Heck at best buy the cheapest 2 channel receiver was $140ish. And I couldn’t do much better online. And one of the reasons I was afraid was because a lot of user reviews of receivers in the past several years complained that the hdmi switching board had some or all ports fail within a year or two. I am hoping this 2013 line of receivers will fare much better.