Don't fall in this review.
I brough this systems and it was the worstest i ever hear.

I needed to re-populate my home theatre with surround equipment, as we were selling the house and the basement was in an Identity crisis. I had ripped out my old home theatre a few years ago, which consisted mainly of a Yamaha DSP-AX1, big Yamaha 800Watt sub and 6 full range tall-boy speakers plus projector.

I did it to make space for my stereo only setup, when I got a new plasma upstairs.

My stereo setup is great with my speakers being a lovely set of Infinity Kappa 9.2i Series II, 2 Rotel power amps - RB-980bx for the bass and RB-981 for the delicate heighs - a truly awesome combo. For a pre amp, I'm using a Yamaha RX-V659 surround amp - it works fantastic as it has this true 'pure direct' setting, which really works and also has those great built-in Burr-Brown dacs.

Anyway, I thought long and hard - I did not want to spend too much money, yet wanted something that at least was up to date and sounded nice.
My favourite local store was selling the Sony DAV-IS10 at a discounted price at around $500, but also had a demo unit at half that ($250). I thought - it had all the features I required, but can it possibly impress? With such small speakers?

I read the professional reviews on this unit and everyone seemed to agree that is was outstanding value at a few time the price that I could get it for - so I took the plunge.

I set it up loosely, just scattering the satilites around, just to see if it is really worth mounting and selling it as a 'home theatre' included with the house sale.
It was sounding ok, but not great.

I then mounted it properly and also ran the automated microphone assisted setup. Wow, now it came alive and sounded the business.

The 5 small speakers are real gems, as they mount easily and comes with enough wiring for a large room - all colour coded. There are 5 L-shaped mounting brackets included, which are minute, but perfectly up to the task.

It seems like the amps are all in the down-firing sub-woofer box, as well as the up-firing mid-range driver. The vain control unit is very light and neatly connects with a single multi-pin d-sub cable to the Sub-box. The onlu power cord is permanently attached to the sub-box.

The main unit also houses the tuner and the dvd player and has several additional inputs, with 1 HDMI out port, Component and Composite out as well.

I have tested it with a lot of media content and just cannot be more impressed - it really shines.
Yes, it does not go anywhere ner as loud as my old setup, but it is just loud enough and is all but invissible!
Yes, the dynamics is not perfect, but you will have to spend 20 times more to get even close to perfect.

It also consumes very little power compared to any other bigger system and basically draws zero power when in standby (I tested it with my kill-a-watt meter) - which is a great plus.

It is easy to setup overall, but the remote takes a while to get used to - if ever.

I was so impressed that I went and bought a 2nd, new and sealed unit to install when we build our new house at the beach. Why? you might ask - It is just the right amount of surround sound for anyone really - why do we always want more than we really need?

Highly recommended for all the sensible people out there, which knows how to quantify 'enough' ;)