Price Paid:  $270.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
Just bought the HTR-5540 becuase Best Buy as usual doesn''t have what they advertise and generally suck. This unit appealed to me it now includes Pro Logic II which is a big plus but drops the binder posts for your mains, front a/v inputs and I believe some digital inputs. It does come with one optical digital in and one Digital coax in. The speaker wire connectors are adequate for anyone without top of the line speakers and 12 gauge wire and do accept banana plugs but I question the efficiency of using them with this particular setup. Puts out great clean stereo audio. No noticeable white noise when using optical in, sounds wonderful and no hang-ups as some reviews have mentioned when using CD''s and optical ins. Still trying to get everything setups for movie use. I''ve complicated things as I''m only using 2 mains (3-way technics sb-cr77''s) and don''t have any surround speakers yet. Seems to be a great product for the price and drops the bells and whistles no one uses anyway. I do wish it had s-video and a/b speaker switching but oh well, I lived without them before,

Strengths:
Price, Power, clarity, versatility, Pro Logic II

Weaknesses:
no s-video, too few optical inputs/outputs, a/b speaker switching

Similar Products Used:
Old Technics stereo reciever (noisy!)

Price Paid:  $249.00 from best buy

Summary:
well I''ve had this unit for 6 months and i''m well pleased with the unit it has great sound my hats off to the company my only compliant is that it doesn''t have enough digital inputs but i would recommned up grading to the 5460 but other than that this is a good reciever.

Strengths:
clean power, enough to fill any room,rated more like 100w per channel, the remote is very user friendly follow the manual, or look at the quick reference card, then you will not have any problems using it, but you can also add addttional digital inputs thorugh radio shack

Weaknesses:
not enough digital inputs, no digital output

Similar Products Used:
sony,