Price Paid:  $699.00 from Best Buy

Summary:
I was in love with this system when I first started using it, but as time wears on I have come to realize it is junk. I own a lot of Sony equipment and have always been impressed by the quality of their products. My television and VCR are well made and have provided me years of dependable, reliable service. The first thing I noticed about the system that I found irritating was the remote. The thing looks really cool, but it''s copious array of buttons only confuse the user. Once the system is the way you like it, all you need are the standard play, stop, and function buttons. My biggest gripe is with the design of the machine. When you play a DVD the thing gets HOT. The vents are on half of the top, so be sure to keep everything off the machine. I have had mine in the shop twice because of some heat related failure which even my diligence could not prevent. One annoying design flaw is that once the system fails there is no manual override to release the disks. I now own two rental DVD''s that went to the shop with the machine. The warranty pays for the repairs, but not the DVD''s trapped in the system or the time it takes to get it to a dealer. The bottom line is that I bought the name because I expect the machine to work and it has shown itself to be a lemon. After three repairs I can return it for another one, but I will not have another DAV-C700 in my house.

Strengths:
Compact, easy to set up, looks good

Weaknesses:
Runs too hot, strange stand-by mode, confusing controller,

Price Paid:  $600.00 from J and R, New York

Summary:
I purchased this with and for a friend who lives in a small apartment in NY, and knows nothing about electronics. This was the best you can do for the buck, in limited space. Even I, who has a much larger system, was impressed with the sound, lots of real weight to the bass and crosses over nicely to the small front/rear speakers. Hides 5 DVD, SACD or CD discs inside, relatively easy to use except for the small buttons on the very beautiful remote - looks like plexiglass.

It would be perfect if it had one or more extra inputs on the rear. Only has two usable ones (the optical if used, supercedes one of the two analogue inputs. An external input switcher would allow more inputs.

This a great buy if you have limited space or want the home theater to be more or less invisible.

Strengths:
Appearance, small size, good sound

Weaknesses:
Remote: Beautiful but too many tiny buttons and hard to read labels.

Summary:
Looking for a small system to fill various duties and this unit does it for me!!!

Pretty Good little system(50WX5 + 100 sub). Bass extension is solid (sorry never measured). No satellite and subwoofer gap in the frequency range.

Associated Equipment:
DAV-C700 Surround system
KV-27FS13 27" WEGA
Playstation 2
PSone
Nintendo Gamecube
Various Acoustic Research Performance Series Cables

Strengths:
Looks, Multichannel Sound Quality, SACD... Two Channel is not bad. Awesome in small rooms!!!

Weaknesses:
Not enough Optical inputs and a dedicated sub output like the DAV-S300. Component video switching would be nice.

Similar Products Used:
Lot's of Stuff