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Date: 2008-09-26 Superb sound, easy connection, easy controls I bought this receiver 2 weeks ago. So far, I absolutely love it. I have connected it to a Panasonic mdp-bd30 blu-ray player and a Samsung LN46A650 46" LCD TV, through HDMI. Setup was very easy, with an HDMI cable comming from my satellite box and another from the Blu-Ray box, and then a single cable going from the receiver to my TV. I set the Blu-Ray player to send the audio information in bitstream to the receiver, and the receiver so far has perfectly played all the audio formats, including Dolby TrueHD, and Dolby Digital 5.1 The sound has been truly amazing, with the Polk 5.1 speaker system I also bought from Amazon. My family and I have watched some high-energy movies, such as "300" and "Apocalypto" and the sound has been truly exhilarating. Even football games have been revolutionary, as the 5.1 separation creates a game-changing experience when compared to watching on a standard TV or even with a two-channel stereo. Overall, the quality of the sound is stunning. My normal-sized TV room is filled with clear, rich, separated sound. The subwoofer creates nerve-tingling effects, especially in action movies. Understanding how to configure and set up the receiver was easy. Once the speakers were connected, I used the device's automatic sensor device to balance the speakers and set the equalization. That process took 5 minutes and was perfectly simple to follow, given the excellent on-TV directions that the receiver provides. I am not a techie audiofile, but was able to set up and configure the receiver in about 10 minutes. I'd recommend buying a Logitech Harmony 550 remote to control all the devices seamlessly from one remote. Even my wife and children can easily control the combination of devices from the single remote. I originally was going to by the Onkyo 505, but learned that it did not process TrueHD sound, and has only 2 HDMI inputs. The 606 was about $150 more, but it was very much worth spending the extra. Date: 2008-09-25 HDMI Switching at an Incredible Price This is my second Onkyo receiver. My first did component video and audio switching. It is still working perfectly. BUT... This one does HDMI switching and is the reason I purchased it. In fact, it has four HDMI inputs and one output to your TV. If you only have one HDMI input on your TV, this receiver is priceless if you want HDMI quality. Speaking of price, it is the best value in HDMI switching today. I love the fact that I can pass component video through the HDMI output to my TV. The Auddessy microphone is simple to use and calibrates speaker distances and volume levels perfectly. My only issue is the slow HDMI switching. It takes a few seconds to switch between sources, often resulting in one or two seconds of blue-screen. Several PS3 owners have stated they hear a buzz through the speakers. I do not. No issues there. Overall, this is the best receiver I have ever owned. UPDATE: I recently discovered that this receiver requires 550 watts of power. No wonder my electricty bill went up! Date: 2008-09-25 Nice receiver but problems with remote I really like this receiver and the quality of both sound and video. However, there is a strange problem with using a remote right after startup. It usually takes about 4-5 minutes after startup before the remote works. During this time, the receiver can only be controlled by manual buttons. Strange issue that I can find no help on. Date: 2008-09-23 Best Bang for Price! I am totally satisfied with this receiver. Setup is easy and quick! It does get hot like they say but it's normal. You have to make to sure to give it some breathing room. Date: 2008-09-23 Great quality for the price, with a few minor caveats After a lot of research, I finally pulled the trigger on the Onkyo TX-SR606 receiver. Overall, I'd say I'm 90% satisfied with it, and for someone as nitpicky as me, that says a lot. There are other reviews that will sing the praises of the audio output for the receiver, but I'll just say that the Audyssey sound setup was excellently calibrated and my Harmon Kardon HTKS-18 5.1 speakers sound fantastic. Where you might run into trouble with this receiver is the video output. Some of the problems I ran into with the system over the past 2 months can be summarized as video signal dropout. None are total deal breakers, to be sure, some may be systemic to my particular setup. But if these issues bother you, you might want to look elsewhere. My home entertainment set-up includes a Sony Bravia HDTV, and multiple types of inputs including composite (PS2), component (DVR, Wii) and HDMI (DVD, Xbox 360), and one HDMI output to the TV. First issue: occasionally there are brief (1-5 second) interruptions in the video output to the TV when watching live cable, while the audio is normal. It is as if the video quality that reached the receiver wasn't of high enough fidelity to be converted to 1080i. This may be because I didn't want to spend money a ridiculously overpriced Monster HDMI cable, however, this problem doesn't occur when watching shows recorded on DVR. The second issue is also annoying and is one that is proven to be systemic to many types of Onkyo receivers. If you own a Nintendo Wii and play the downloadable Virtual Console games, which have much lower resolution signals, you will need to alter the now standard "all in, one HDMI out" setup. The upscaling conversion that is advertised for the TX-SR606 does NOT work properly for the VC game output codec and again shows a blank screen when active. None of the alternate HDMI video output modes found in the setup screen work in fixing the video. The signal is making it to the receiver because when you pause the Wii VC game with Home button, causing the 480p menu screen to appear, the video signal returns. The one solution I found was to send the component video to the TV directly and the component audio the receiver as normal. The Wii doesn't really benefit too much from any upscaling anyway. You'll just have to switch inputs on the TV, a minor inconvienence, as you can do it with a properly setup Onkyo remote. Although I've discussed the problems I've had with the receiver, overall, I'm very pleased with it. I expected much more of a problem getting the audio set up than the video, but the audio quality is superb. Just try to be flexible with how you want your video inputs setup, because that still can use some work on this model.
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