Nice clean sound 2-way remote works perfect with 200cd changer and displays songs and cd titles on the 2-way remote

remote control forgets codes remote a little expensive to replace(so take care of the first one and you'll have no problems)

I bought the reciever when it first hit the market and was very pleased with it. The clarity and the 2-way remote really seperated it from the rest. At first the remote was hard to operate because it was new to me, but after i got the hang of it I thought the reciever was flawless.

Similar Products Used:

Kenwood 1080

sound if you can get it.

Customer support on this remote controll they need to help there customers.

Reciever has great sound and many features.The trouble with the product is the remote controll.My controll has completley failed and I just found out that the replacement from Kenwood direct is 382.33 ( wow )without the remote the reciever is usless dont buy this unit!!!.I do not believe that I will ever concider Kenwood again.Model vr-3100.

Features - price ....

none yet. Just people who expect way more more than they pay for.

I have used audioreview to help me make many informed purchases of audio products with outstanding results. The Kenwood 3100 is an Excellent / OUTSTANDING A/V receiver for the money spent. I own and use the 3100 everyday and am Very Happy with it`s performance. It is a shame an Idiot like Tom Maciejewski (see his reviews)would rate this A/V receiver and bring the over all rating down because he was foolish to buy one with out a remote control -- Wake-up Tom !! Are you a know it all - but know nothing ? Larry`s review was far to kind of Tom and his type. I will not be kind - These simple - single minded people should be band from lowering the rating of otherwise fine product(s)with truly unbias open minded opion of products.

Similar Products Used:

Many

Una potencia de salida pareja en todos sus canales, con una claridad de sonido a toda prueba. Permite intensificar los sonidos graves en piezas musicales donde estos son debiles. La distorsion armonica no se percibe, inclusive a su maxima potencia.

Falta en este modelo 6 entradas analogicas para otros formatos de audio.

Hermoso diseño, con excelentes prestaciones para Audio y Home Teather.
Un excelente control remoto universal, que permite integrar casi cualquier sistema audio/video(VCR, TV, DVD, CD, Phone, etc.)

Cool remote. Looks nice in silver.

Remote breaks - to replace it you can get another receiver for the cost! Runs hot! Rated at 100 watts per channel but just at 6 ohms that is only about 43 watts per channel at 8 ohms that it puts out - so you should look for 6 ohm speakers to match. Noise in subwoofer. If you select the large mode for speakers bass management is way off.

Well, you can get them for a low price. The receiver offers many features. But is missing inputs for the new DVD-audio or Sony super cd. If the remote goes you are out of luck! Another in the silver series for Kenwood -mostly popular price wise but can not compete with Marantz or yamaha or many others for that fact. Made in China cheapo! It is funny how you see more refurbished units for sale 6 months to a year after the product comes out. That says something for reliablity. If you can pick one up on close out for 500 that is ok but if your going to spend a 1000. look to better models from other manufactures.

Similar Products Used:

Kenwood 3090, Marantz 700

I just wanted to post an update on the service from 6th ave electronics. I sort of bashed them in my above review after the store refused to help me out. I was able to call the corporate offices and they were able to locate the remote control for me and split the cost of their price of teh remote with me. So I paid $150 for the $600 remote control. I thought this was fair and wanted to post back to this list to say that the service / total value I received was now acceptable for this item and once I contacted the corporate offices it was outstanding.

*WARRANTY*
Sound is rich and warm
Auto surround selection is flawless
No hissing at any volume level when a signal is not present (auto mute?)

Remote "forgets" codes

After a month of buying and returning receivers, I bought this Kenwood. I must say I would have saved a lot of time if I would have purchased the VR-3100 first. I bought the Harman Kardon AVR500 first. It worked for 3 days and then the channels blew. Returned it for another, it lasted 10 minutes and blew. Went and bought the Onkyo TX-DS777, and just didn't like the overall product. The Integra DTR-7 I bought was just too harsh on treble.

The VR-3100 blew me away as soon as I turned it on. I didn't even tweak the sound on it, and it sounded perfect! The remote was a little hard to get used to, but with a little tweaking of the sound, I knew I had finally bought a good receiver. And to top it off, I registered my receiver on their website, and was pleased when it thanked me and told me my warranty was extended from 2 years to 4 years! Can't beat that!!! That's more than the Onkyo Integra which is only 3 years!

Now back to the remote problem. I programmed the remote for my Sony equipment and was pleased to see that all the built in codes worked great. Everything was programmed and working great....for a week. For some reason I turned on my DVD player with the PowerTouch remote just fine, and went back to select the video input on my TV, and it didn't work it. Hmmmmm. Went back to the DVD player to stop the movie and it didn't work that either! Weird. I went to the Kenwood bulletin board on their site and found out I wasn't alone on this problem.

I called Kenwood today, and they said they would probably just send me a new remote....that's fine with me, because this is the best receiver I've ever heard!

Similar Products Used:

Onkyo Integra DTR-7
Onkyo TX-DS777
Harman Kardon AVR500

Sound quality, remote, feature list, styling

Price/value, hard to find

The 3100 is a very nice receiver.

It is, however, expensive ($1499 at 800.com as of 2/1), assuming you can find someone who sells it.

First, the good stuff.

It sounds very, very good. There is no noticeable drop in video quality going through the A/V inputs. The sound quality is fantastic even when cold, and the unit does not need to "warm up" to reach optimum performance (Kenwood calls this KSTAT technology, or something like that). The option to use pre-amp outs instead of the internal amp is greatly appreciated.

It's got features. Lots of _useful_ features.

It supports dts, Dolby Pro-Logic and Dolby Digital sound, and auto-senses the input. You can also opt for regular stereo or 3-stereo mode. For those who feel the need for artificial enhancements, you can opt for five DSP modes, all tweakable from the remote (input your wall hardness and room size). Also supports two "midnight theater" modes for those DVD's/LD's that have the encoding.

Speaker setup is easy: you program the distances for each, and can even adjust the sound levels of the surround and center channels to match your fronts (made easier using the 3100's noise generator).

Lots and lots of inputs. Two CD, two tape/MD, phono, 4 A/V and one aux A/V (in front). Supports two optical digital ins and one co-ax digital. Very flexible.

The dual room/dual source capability is very nice, letting you send a A/V second source to a second room while watching/listening to another source at your "primary" location, at the same time (ie, watch a movie in one room, play CD's in another). Both rooms canuse either main speaker outs or pre-amp outs. Room A gets the surround channels, and room B gets stereo only.

And the remote! It's a touch screen LCD programmable remote with learning capability. Programming is easy (though tedious), and the learning curve is acceptable. It utilizes two-way IR communication to send status info back to the remote, so it doesn't need an OSD for your television. The receiver supports inputs for two IR repeaters (available from Kenwood) for mounting in other rooms, and the remote itself can be mounted on a wall and plugged in to an AC outlet. Battery life (6 AA's) has been good so far (it shuts off the LCD screen after a few seconds, which really conserves power), though I'd recommend a set of NiMH's. Operation is possible without the remote, but you lose a lot of the convenience.

For those who own the Kenwood 200-CD changers, you get your title and track lists displayed right on the remote's LCD screen, which is very handy, and the remote includes a touch-screen keyboard for entering names. For those with the 2280M/3280M players, outputs A and B become CD1 and CD2, respectively, and the remote understands how to operate the two zones properly. Again, very nice.

For those listening to the radio, you get RDS for music program searches (assuming stations in your area broadcast RDS data, of course), lots of presets and an auto-program mode. The display and remote will show you the station's call letters if they are programmed in or broadcast by the station.

Now the bad news.

It's expensive. There are a handful of missing features and annoyances that I don't expect at this price level.

First off, the speakers are rated at 100 W/channel, but that's at 6 ohms and not 8. Bad, Kenwood, for playing that trick.

The receiver isn't powerful enough to drive all six surround channels _and_ the stereo channels in the second room at the same time. You get stereo in both, or surround in room A with pre-amp outs to B. This is not a big deal, though, since most enthusiasts will opt for pre-amps, but...at $1500, you might expect more than this.

The tuner will auto-program presets, but won't program the remote with the station frequency or call sign that was found for each preset. The end result is that you get 20-some stations in the presets, but the remote shows them all blank. With 2-way IR communication, I expect the receiver to at least transmit the station name or frequency to the remote for storage. I shouldn't have had to label things manually.

The learning remote is very nice, but only gives you 8 "blank" buttons for naming and programming. This is not always enough. And, while you can re-program the pre-defined buttons for the device you are controlling, but you can't rename them. Last, the pre-defined buttons aren't complete enough. For example, I have a Sony TV, but the pre-defined buttons for the Sony TV remote did not include the menu button, or the up/down selector for menu items. I had to program these, eating into the 8 precious blank buttons. Last, you only get 6 characters for a button name, and you aren't provided with graphic characters like up or down arrows for labeling. This is an annoying limitation.

In the grand scheme of things, these are minor complaints. But at $1500, you might consider even the minor issues to be unacceptable, so think about it before you buy. And remember, the 3090 is the exact same unit without the dual room and RDS capbilities, so if you don't need those, don't buy the 3100.

Overall, it's a great receiver, and we love it. The remote coupled with the sound quality have us hooked. But it may not be the best price/value receiver on the market.

Cool 2 way Remote. Multi-Room functions. Great Sound

Heavy reliance on the remote--but can overcome that with a 2nd learning remote. Short on front panel controls. Can't find the matching ir-9991 anywhere, and it's been discontinued.

I've had this receiver for a good while now. I've come to know it's features pretty well, and enjoy it's performance.
At first I didn't like the remote, even though it is miles ahead of the other non-touchscreen LCD powertouch used by the 3080, and the 2000 series AV Recievers.

I already had a "home theatre master" learning remote that I love, so I taught it the kenwood signals and used it almost all the time. The only time I needed the Kenwood remote was when I wanted to tweak the receiver. Otherwise my 2nd learning remote could switch from DPL, to stereo and other modes much quicker. Having said that, I am NOW beginning to really like the powertouch remote. There's a learnig curve to it, but once it is learned, it's pretty cool having signals go both to the receiver and back from the receiver to the powertouch.

I have the matching 200 disc multi room cd player. I programmed close to 200 discs using the receiver's remote. The titles appear both on the front of the CD player's panel, and on the 3100's lcd remote. It stores all the disc titles, tracks and artist names inside the remote, and reads any changes made to the disc player. Pretty cool. Plus the styling on both units are the same and look quite striking.

It's too bad that Tom only gave this good reciever 1 star. He lowered the overall rating here by foolishly taking his mistake out on the receiver's rating. Anyone reading can tell that he should be angry with himself for not knowing what he was doing when he bought it without a remote. I saw him trying to sell it on ebay for $350. $100 bucks more than he paid. Ah well.

I'm very happy with this receiver. The 2 way remote sets it apart from others.

Similar Products Used:

Kenwood 3080, Denon 5600, Onkyo tx-ds747

great sound many features

you cant do anything without the control! A replacement control costs almost as much as the entire system

I was looking for a low end reciever for home use and came accross this one as a floor model in the clearance rack for $250 so I bought it. The sales person at 6th ave told me after I decided on buying it that it didnt have the remote control but he told me that I could get one off of the net for like $50. Well I got home and thought that I got a great deal when I saw the prices for it online. But when I went to get the remote I was in for one hell of a shock. The remote control costs over $500 to purchase by itself. I found the entire unit new for $799 at www.yourdigitalhome.com . I am pissed. You can not do anything except for raising the volume. Nothing! And a regular universal remote wont give you any benifits not even for the volume. The people at 6th Avenue electronics wont give me my money back for it. And I refuse to pay $500 for a remote control so I am pretty much screwed.

The sound and power from this thing is nice and after reading the manual there are a ton of features but the fact that everything revolves around a remote control that if broken costs $500 would prevent me from buying this product again!

If anyone knows where I could get a remote for this for a reasonable price ( even used or refurbed ) email me at tommaciejewski@yahoo.com .
Thank you

PS I would also reccommend that no one buy anything from 6th ave electronics ... they are very over priced and you have to haggle for everything and they dont think twice after screwing you over.