Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
113 of 115 people found the following review helpful.
Great Receiver! Improved Remote. Easy set-up.
By V. M.
I just received my new Sony STR-DH810 7.1 on Friday afternoon. I already had the previous version, the STR-DH800 set up in the living room. The DH810 I got for the den. It took less than an hour to pull the plugs out of my old Sony (non-HDMI) receiver and set-up the DH810. I would recommend that anyone getting this get a set of banana plugs for the speaker inputs. You "can" get the wires in the "screw-in" connectors, but banana plugs are just so much easier to deal with. I am using all 3 component inputs, 3 of 4 HDMI, Composite and CD, including DVD Coax, and all Optical audio inputs. Everything is very accessible and clearly labeled.Once I had everything set up, I ran through the Audio/Video set-up manually. The DH810 comes with a mic that allows you to automatically configure your sound system (the receiver does all the work, but I prefer to do the "tweaking" manually. But that's just me. However, that said, after manually setting up my system, I reset the receiver and allowed the included mic to automatically detect and set up my sound system (just to see how it handled the task) and it did a bangin' job! Very easy automated and intuitive set-up.The initial set-up is a breeze. Hold down the On/Off button on the receiver for 5 seconds until the receiver says CLEAR (which you can do anytime you want to undo any major blunders or just start fresh). Press the speaker button on the receiver until your speaker set-up appears, select your desired input button on the remote, crank up the volume and you have sound! From there, the remote's menu allows you to configure all the tweaks like EQ, Speaker distance, balance, bass, treble, you TVs resolution, etc. I would prefer some kind of TV-On-Screen Menu, but that is not really a big deal to me.The sound is phenomenal and the DVD upscaling is very cool. I have Avatar on DVD (not blu ray) and the picture upscaled crisp and clear. The sound coming out of the speakers is clean and crisp. My audio CD's, movies, Cable TV, all sound great with the DH810.I had been putting off buying this until someone gave it a rating, and I finally found a couple on the web that convinced me to give it an "early-adopter" try. Suffice to say, I am NOT DISAPPOINTED! The Price of $285 with no shipping was just a BIG plus too.I will probably add to my rating later on, but for now, I HEARTILY recommend the STR-DH810 to anyone that has been hankering to upgrade their sound system with an upscaling 1080p A/V Receiver.
58 of 59 people found the following review helpful.
An excellent buy for starting a 7.1 system
By Michael C
I purchased this receiver a few days ago and waited until I ran it through as many set-ups and combinations as I could in order to be as thorough in my review as possible. The STR-DH810 has been able to easily handle everything I've thrown at it through every type of cable imaginable and has only had one flaw that I've noticed: upscaling a composite video signal to 1080p (from a Nintendo 64 in this instance) seems to come with some flicker to the upscaled image, but flicker was solved by changing the resolution to 480p or 1080i. My only fault with the input set-up in the back is that there are no audio inputs that correlate directly with the component video inputs, so when I want to hook up a Wii or Xbox with component cables I have to hook the audio cables up to different inputs. Therefore, I have to have the L/R audio cables plugged into the BD composite audio input and reprogram where the video signal comes from in order to have the video and audio programmed to the same input selection. Because of this I had to do some unconventional reassigning of inputs, but since each input can be named by the user it is simple enough to keep track of.Programming the remote to work with all of my components was very simple. Everything is working smoothly together, especially by utilizing Bravia Sync with a PS3.5.1 and 7.1 DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD have been handled perfectly and the 7.1 set-up has given my living room a sound field that I wouldn't have believed. I prefer to calibrate my speakers by my own ear, but using the Auto Cal option to see how well it works was a very pleasant surprise, and trying to fool the mic by placing it in tough spots was harder to do than one would imagine. As long as the environment is quiet during the Auto Cal, then the calibration will do a fantastic job. I preferred to do a few tweaks of my own after the Auto Cal, but for the most part I felt that it was spot on.This seems to be a fantastic starting receiver for the price, and the only reason I could see to upgrade to the STR-DH1010 would be for HDMI 1.4 support for 3D. If 3D isn't your concern then this receiver is the way to go.UPDATE 5/1/11 : There is a firmware update that allows for 3D compatibility with this model!
29 of 31 people found the following review helpful.
Great receiver with a few drawbacks
By Akubra Dude
OK, I admit that I am pretty much a Sony brand loyalist; having items ranging from clock radios to cameras to televisions dating back over 25 years. But I am also a person who people say is a "call 'em like I see 'em" kind of guy. The STR-DH810 is a good, solid A/V receiver. However, some disappointing shortcomings and a lopsided emphasis on the "V" part of A/V keeps me from giving this unit a 5th star on its rating. I still would not hesitate to recommend this unit to friends with the caveat that they should be aware of what they are not getting as much as what they are.It is obvious that the folks at Sony have put most of their focus on people who have the newest equipment at the expense of the large customer base that have a significant investment in Sony products over the last several years that are still going strong. This is evident in the constant touting of HDMI connections and 3D readiness. What you don't hear is what connectivity was dropped. I always strongly recommend to my friends that the[= download the user manual from a manufacturer's support site before making a final decision. For Sony, that is esupport.[...]. This is literally a case of "a picture is worth a thousand words."For me, what was lost was needed audio connections; there is only one set of dedicated audio in/outs (labeled SA-CD/CD/CD-R). You can always use the audio connections of a video input, but it still feels a tad wasteful to leave the video connections forever unused. It is also inconvenient for the need to give a briefing to your family telling them that the audio connection you labeled "HD Tuner" is operated by first pressing the "Video 1" button on the remote. However, I do understand that at this price point it is hard to fit the majority of configurations conveniently.Another disappointment, for those that use this receiver as much or more for audio, is the FM tuner. First, the tuner section is not as good as the one in the 10 year-old Sony it replaced. In a quiet room I can hear the noise floor hiss during silent moments in the programming. As I said, my old tuner did better and I live about 20 miles from most transmitters and us an outdoor antenna so signal strength is not the problem. Secondly, why did Sony invest valuable production budget putting in the S-AIR and DMPORT connections that only a small portion of the customer base will use and not bother putting HD Radio capabilities in its tuner? I ended up purchasing a Sony XDRF1HD HD Radio Tuner which overcame both problems but I still wondered why I had to do that in this level of receiver.Several other reviewers described some shortcomings in the video options despite the promise of the many connections. Once again, for me, the problem is what they have dropped in recent years. For instance, my DIgital 8 HandyCam is still making great videos, yet there is not a single S-Video input. Fortunately my TV still has one. I really would like to have seen what upscaling would have done with my D8 videos.I have a similar disappointment with the speaker connections. It's obvious from the 7.1 designation that the 'DH810 has connections for Surround Back speakers. You may have also heard that there are connections for "Front B", "Front High", and "Bi-Amped" speakers. What is not obvious from most literature or the Sony Style website is that these are referring to the SAME set of connections. Of the four configurations I just mentioned, you can only use ONE of them because of this. For example, if you have both a remote pair of speakers and surround back speakers you are out of luck; one pair will go unused. This is where downloading the user manual before purchasing can save you some grief, and possibly $$'sThe other major reason for only 4 stars on the ratings was the manual; about which many reviewers have already written. Sony has definitely cut back in their Tech Writing department in recent years. It's not so much that it suffers from bad translation into English, although there are a few cases of awkward grammar, but rather it doesn't take enough pages to adequately cover some of the complex switching/configuration capabilities of this unit. This manual is far shorter than some of their earlier, less capable receivers.A good example: Connecting and using a second set of "Front" speakers. (In the past know as just the "B" speakers; in the manual referred to as "Front B" speakers.) No matter how hard you try, you will not find a complete set of instructions in the manual on how to correctly set the unit up to listen to a second front pair once they are connected. Here are the missing instructions:1. Press AMP MENU on the remote. 2. Use the up/down arrows until you see SPEAKER displayed. 3. Press the right arrow button and then the up/down arrows until you see SP PATTERN on the display. 4. Press the right arrow button to see the setting options. 5. Use the up/down arrows to select a setting that that is either "equal" to 3/2.1 or below (see the list on pg 78 of the manual). 6. Press the left arrow button to save the selected setting and get back to the parameter menu. 7. Use the up/down arrows until you see SB ASSIGN displayed. (If this option is dimmed, you didn't select a correct setting in step 5.) 8. Press the right arrow button to see the setting options. 9. Use the up/down arrows to select SPK B. 9. Press AMP MENU to save the setting and exit the menu. 10. Press the SPEAKERS button until you see the configuration you what displayed (A, B, A+B, OFF)Unfortunately there is no direct way to go back to a surround configuration without basically following steps 1 - 6 to undo what you just did.Enjoy
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What You Need to Know About Why It May Not Work (but won't find out from reading the product details)
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