Price Paid:  $700.00 from Network Direct Inc.

Summary:
What a piece of junk. Wish I would have read the reviews before purchasing. My unit just blanked out tonight in the middle of a movie - for no reason, the picture was gone. And then my audio signal from the TV/satellite has been screwy for months, sometimes coming out of just one speaker, or nothing at all. I'm guessing that based on all the other negative reviews, this thing really DOES overheat and fry itself after a while. Not sure it's worth spending the $$ for repair. Thinking I should just buy a new head unit (won't be a Sony), keep the speakers, and splice in some new connectors for the speaker wires. Might take the old DVDC900 and put some rounds through it with my SKS. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS SONY PRODUCT - THEIR TVs ARE GREAT, THEIR HOME THEATER SYSTEMS ARE NOT!!

Strengths:
It worked well for a while; great system for smaller rooms.

Weaknesses:
Poor quality. Lame remote.

Price Paid:  $800.00 from online

Summary:
The setup, as everybody said, was a breeze. Included speaker stands look good and spare you from either buying separately or wall-mounting.
Remote control stinks. The person designing it managed to create the layout without any logic and with a miriad of tiny butons with just as tiny a signs.
No major problems with DVD player for over a year now, although it certainly does not like scratches on the disk. Disk exchange is slow and mechanism is loud.
Sound quality very decent for movie playback, subwoofer volume is adequate, (granted, I have a small living room, but in general I would not want my windows shattered by 25 HZ 150 DB sounds).
Music playback is more than acceptable for casual listener, which I am. If you have a discriminating ear - look elsewhere. Or if you are deafened by years of REALLY powerful subwoofers shaking your walls and shrinking your brains - this is not for you. For the humble rest of us this sound quality will do fine.
By the way, my DAV came wothout a manual; I called Sony and had it delivered free of charge in about a week.

Strengths:
Compact, easy to set up, good looks, included speaker stands, acceptable sound quality, has been reliable for about 2 years now.

Weaknesses:
Horrible remote. There are other systems on the market, as I know now, which would give you better sound and cost less (such as Pioneer HDT-520DV, for example).

Price Paid:  $999.00 from Circuit City

Summary:
I couldn't believe that any 1000 dollar systeam could sound this bad! I kept wondering where the music was. I demoed it at the Circuit City and we kept playing with the wires thinking speakers were unplugged. Then we swapped out of of the 5 for another speaker just to prove to ourselves that the tower speakers were really that muted. I grabbed the same dvd and played it on the similar Panasonic home theater system (SC-HT900) which sells for 499 dollars. The Panasonic was incredible by comparison and for half the price! Sony has a passive subwoofer which is worthless. The tower speakers are completely void of depth, frequency range, dynamic range, etc. Muffled and flat are the 2 words that come to mind when listening to this system.

Strengths:
Nicely styled tower speakers. Much better looking than the Panasonic SC-HT900 tower spekers. This system has SACD. The Panasonic does not.

Weaknesses:
Everything else. This system should sell for 300 dollars to be of any value. But it still would not sound good.

Similar Products Used:
Yamaha and Sony surround receivers.

Price Paid:  $750.00 from etronics

Summary:
biggest pile of crap on the market... i have this setup for my bedroom, and it sucks bigtime. had it for 2 days and it died. sony authorized repair shop had it for 3 months and was finally able to fix it... guess what, a year later, same thing happened. sony tried to charge me $199 to fix + shipping both ways. i took the unit to the sony authorized repair shop that originally fixed it and they said that they dont mess w/ sony products anymore because they suck and theyre too hard to repair. $150 and 3 weeks later from another repair shop, the davc900 is back in my bedroom. the tech at this repair shop said that the head unit heats up way too hot very quickly. thats what keeps frying it. SO I DONT RECOMMEND THIS PIECE OF CRAP UNLESS YOU HAVE A FAN DIRECTLY OVER IT TO KEEP IT COOL! FORGET THAT I DONT RECOMMEND IT AT ALL, THE SUB SUCKS AND THE SYSTEM HAS NO POWER. DONT BUY THIS THING...UNLESS YOUR LIKE TAKING IT TO THE REPAIR SHOP EVERY YEAR.

Strengths:
the speaker stands are cool

Weaknesses:
THE TOTAL PACKAGE IS WEAK
REALLY LOW POWER
THE SUB IS HORRIBLE

Similar Products Used:
SONY......NEVER AGAIN

Price Paid:  $1200.00 from South Van Color TV

Summary:
few corrections:
Price is in CDN dollars..
Product Year: 2002 (Dav 990)

I originally was shopping around for a HTS to play games (specifically GCN) and watch movies with.

I was gonna go spend 6000 cdn on a bunch of speakers either from Energy's connoiseur or Paradgim's monitor series. I realized I was going overboard... so i decided to get an HTiB instead. I did get the system cheap. Drawback though was that i couldn't return it. I was just so PO'ed to find out Energy Take 5.2 can be haggled down to 750 cdn (tax included)... Add a receiver and a dvd and it wouldn't cost that more than what i paid for the system..

It acctually isn't bad when used for watching movies or playing games in surround with. The subs... it's not bad...

You play around with it.. and you'd learn to use some of the features (like cinema a b or c)... Virtual Speakers acctually do work! All of a sudden, i felt myself surrounded by more than 5 speakers!

It's won WhatHifi Mag's best HTiB of the year (C550 in europe) ... PScanning DVD with SACD playback isn't too shabby either.

Strengths:
Easy to set up
"Digital Cinema Surround" acctually works.
Aesthetics - they look sweet indeed
Not bad when all speakers are used at the same time.

Weaknesses:
ONLY ONE optical input
No component cable input
err.. crappy speaker wires and cables out of the box.
The speaker's weakness comes out when forced to play a music cd in 2 ch. stereo.