Price Paid:  $370.00 from Malaysia

Summary:
OK, let me be the first to write a review for this product here. It's a nice entry level package. It won't bring your roof down but packs enough punch to make the jaws drop on first time HT listeners. The sub-woofer is the high point here and with out it the sound is just too thin and lifeless but punch it on and the system just rocks. (Too bad Sony couldn't find a way to give ON/OFF control of Sub woofer on Remote). Another nice feature is the Remote, which can control my Sony TV as well as my Sony DVD player. It can control other brands of TV/player as well. Illuminated buttons on remote are also nice. However Remote has a strange problem, once in a while it will stop controlling DVD player (especially if it has VCD or Audio CD inside). Then u have to press a key sequence on Remote to get it going again. Irritating but I can live with that but wonder why it happens? 100W per channel seems a marketing gimmick. Another thing is that volume levels needs to be rather high to get the best out of this system. Crank up the volume to near max to get the real kick out of this system. The volume increase is not linear (as it must be in DB's though it displays volume in increasing numbers), which means that volume will be audible only when u have cranked up to 30 and will be good at around 50 out of a max setting of 70. It has DTS, DD, PLII, also Digital IN (Coax as well as Optical) but if u want Optical Digital signal from your player to be used, u need to use Video 2 IN rather than DVD IN. A quirky feature but doesn't really matter as Co-ax digital cable is as good as optical over short distances anyway. PLII works well on some sources and doesn't on some other. Don't blame the Sony Box for that, I am told that PLII is unpredictable anyway. But when it works, its amazing. The display unit is quite boring. Wish Sony has used some color on it. It would have been nice to display DTS in a different color than DD, would have given better readability. On-Screen menu's on TV might also have been a good feature. Overall for its price, this is a king of a system. Somebody please point a decent branded system having more features than this?? if u are looking to enter into HT world and don't have a very large room, this is the way to go.. Later when u are well and truly blooded, u can start thinking Onkyo or Denon :-)

Strengths:
1.Price performance ratio is too good 2.Sony Brand 3.Most must-have features are there(DD, DTS, PLII, Digital IN, Powered Sub, Midnight Mode, Universal illuminated Remote, Individual Speaker distance settings) 4. Powered sub-woofer (this baby rocks !!)

Weaknesses:
1. Might be underpowered for very big rooms. Most of the time I need to run at 80% volume to get decent hearing for DVD's in my room which is 300 sqft. 2. Not so good looking reciever, dull display with no colors 3. Supplied micro-Speakers are also no great shakes. I am sure I can improve the system sonically just by migrating to bigger speakers in future with same recievers.

Similar Products Used:
None (First HT) but seen the demo of Bose Life Style, Denon and Onkyo SR501