Price Paid:  $330.00 from e-bay

Summary:
I own the HTR-5240 & RX-V795. The HTR-5240 has a bit more a mellow, but both have great sound for their applications. These units won't play at night club levels. I save that for my Carver system in the living room. For the medium to small room they are outstanding. The 795 is in the bedroom while the 5240 is in the spare bedroom ( where I have my computer ). The only reason I have the 795 in the bedroom is that it has a lighted volume knob that i can see in the dark. But the wheel on the 795's remote is a bit harder to use unless you remember what the next series of selections will be in either direction from where you are starting from. Of course no problem with the lignt on. I know what bottons to push in the dark with the 5240's remote. It's not hard to remember the button layout of either remote. Just dealing with that selector knob on the 795's remote in the dark is the hard part. I hear and read about a lot of people complaining that the DSP modes don't sound right or are useless. Folks, don't be afraid to adjust the parameters as close to perfect as you can to suit your taste ( like you adjust your car seat the way you want it even if it's not perfect. You make the car seat as comfortable as you can for you ). Most of the DSP modes have at least 1 or more parameters that can be changed. Break new ground. Experiment. You might find some setting you like. The only reason I mentioned this is because the one's that I have heard or read about never mention that they really tried to adjust the parameters before they concluded that the DSP modes were useless. Maybe they assumed that it was obvious that they did, but it didn't seem that they played with the parameters to me. For use in a small to medium system in the small to medium room these products are excellent. Even the VERY high end equipment is not perfect ( damn close ). If you have the money to seek perfection, by all means do so. But these units will not get you there. For what you pay you get outstanding results with these units across to board.

Strengths:
Great sound

Weaknesses:
None for the price.

Similar Products Used:
htr-5240

Price Paid:  $800.00

Summary:
I bought this receiver 2 years ago, purely for movies. It produces a reasonable movie sound, for this price. (At the time of buying, there was very little choice in this price range.)

Tuner is good, and gives decent reception, although hiss from lower power stations is accentuated by the receiver.

Rear speaker clips are highly irritating (can't insert decent speaker wire).
Remote is fine, in my opinion. The wheel for selecting target device is a bit stupid, but you get used to it in no time.

Sound is adequate. I have never been able to use this receiver for music, however, because the upper midrange is very harsh, and higher frequencies feel extremely exaggerated compared to the lower midrange. The effect is ear pain after only minutes of listening.

Don't notice this when watching DVDs, however, so in the end as a movie amp it is perfectly reasonable.

Compared to my Myryad MI-120 amp, the Yamaha is totally lacking in musicality and resolution. To give an example, it is not possible using the Yamaha to hear a clear difference between my B&W 603s and 604s, simply because the output of the Yamaha is so muddy. Comparison using my hi-fi amp allows a vivid difference between the two sets of speakers to be heard. (yes, the 604s are a lot better at detail, sound considerably more refined, but the 604/S1 tweeter seems to be brighter and more fatiguing than the 603/S2 tweeter)

The current choice of home theatre amps is much greater, and hopefully there are now amps capable of performing much better with music than the 795...

My home theatre system:

Yamaha RX-V795
B&W DM604 fronts
B&W DM603/S2 rears (bought later)
B&W CC6 centre
Philips DVD 930

Strengths:
Plenty of power, decent number of connections, reasonable sound

Weaknesses:
Upper midrange harsh with music. only useful for movies as the resolution is rather poor.

Price Paid:  $340.00 from Hanover Camera Shop

Summary:
Ths unit blows away the sony I replaced with it. The sound quality differecne is phenomenal. Best $340 I ever spent.

Strengths:
Great bang for the buck! Plenty of power.

Weaknesses:
SAme as everybody, remote and no s-video for DVD

Similar Products Used:
Sony Prologic

Summary:
Yamaha rx-v795 for testing purpose

Summary:
I bought this receiver as an "interim" receiver when, after nine years of faithful service, I had to send my Yamaha DSP-A1000 in for repair. I loved the "new" sound formats so much (ie, Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS, etc..) that it actually became my main receiver for approx. 6-8 months, even after I got the DSP-A1000 back from the repair shop. There is only one major weakness that I could not overlook - in the 1k-10k range this receiver is VERY harsh, "brittle" if you will, when played at the volume levels at which I enjoy music. This could be ignored when viewing movies because of the dynamics of a movie soundtrack, (ie, the extra drivers that come into play with the 5.1 channels and the "busyness" of the soundfield in general - music+dialogue+sound effects) but I got more frustrated with it the more I tried to listen to my music CD's (both older and newer material) I still think it's a hell of a good value for the money but if you are a true audiophile I don't think this receiver is for you.

Strengths:
Value, DTS decoder, Movie sound.

Weaknesses:
Music sound, remote.

Similar Products Used:
Yamaha DSP-A1000, Yamaha RX-V1, Denon AVR-5700, Marantz SR-18