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(More customer reviews)I purchased the NR1602 as a system upgrade when my old 720P business projector conked and needed to switch from a 720P DVI universe to a 1080P HDMI universe. As such, the NR1602 replaces a DVDO IScan HD+, an Outlaw 950 and a 200W/ch Rane commercial amp.
Size-wise it's awesome. Tiny little thing. How's it sound? Plenty good enough. I mix audio for a living and I haven't heard too many receiver/speaker combos currently for sale that aren't "plenty good enough" for most living rooms. In switching from 200W/channel to 50W/channel the biggest difference I notice is that I turn the volume up more. I can still make the system plenty loud enough to annoy my neighbors in my condo. This thing isn't going to power the Hard Rock Hotel but then, if your concern is oomph you aren't buying a compact Rx anyway, are you?
By my count, this Marantz is one of only ten receivers that are currently Airplay-enabled. Airplay works flawlessly on the Marantz: you fire up your iPod or iPhone, the Rx shows up and BAM you switch to it. The Rx will automagically switch from whatever else it was doing and play your portable within about two seconds. Pretty slick. Something to keep in mind, however, is that the NR1602 HAS NO WIFI. If you intend to use Airplay, intend to sting the back of the NR1602 with some CAT5 lovin'. This is actually a feature as far as I'm concerned because I've got a router in the rack and prefer to wire whenever possible but if your sound system is in another room than your cable modem expect to get out the fish tape.
The jackfield out back is sparse, which again is a plus as far as I'm concerned. I'm only running a Mac Mini and a Nintendo Wii into it so a whole bunch of extra inputs aren't too beneficial. It will support 4 HDMI inputs which is pretty much the future so unless you've got a bunch of legacy gear, you're likely okay. One annoying quibble: the speaker jackfield is spaced too far apart for the traditional 2-pin banana plugs that have dominated the industry since Edison was in short pants. Oddly enough, *pairs* of outputs work... so your left and right hot can share a plug while your left and right cold share a plug. Which is janky and annoys me, but there it is.
Where things start to go pear-shaped is in the UI, the setup and the video. For starters, THIS UNIT DOES NOT UPCONVERT AS ADVERTISED. It converts, yeah - plug an analog signal in and you will get digital out of the HDMI. However, if you give it a 480p signal on component you'll get a 480p signal out on HDMI. Even better, the Marantz will screw up the aspect ratio. Give it a 1080i, it'll give you a 1080i. Give it a 1080p, it'll give you a 1080p. Give it a 720p, it'll give you a 720p. Give it nothing and the GUI shows up as 720p. So it's *got* a generator in there, it's just not functioning correctly. Not only that, but the configuration options for HDMI are sparse at best. Power-up on/off. Volume control TV/Amp. That's it. No output settings whatsoever.
Which is kind of the TL;DR on this whole product - "It's in there, it just isn't working right." The "Setup Wizard" crashed on me twice. It won't let you assign a digital audio input to an HDMI video input (in the setup wizard - go digging in the menus and you can do it). In order to check the network connection, you have to press a button on the remote that doesn't actually exist. When futzing about on the internet there are ways to end up in a function with no way to return - Pandora or Flickr, for example. The setup is arcane and rendered in stiff Engrish with no help offered anywhere - and, considering this is an internet-enabled appliance with an HD GUI, the lack of "help" functionality is appalling, particularly since it ships with a scant newsprint "quick start guide" in three languages and a CD full of the actual manual (which is a bulky PDF that taxes my laptop to browse, yet has an index that isn't particularly useful).
But then, the whole reason I opted for this product rather than the 1601 or 1402 is that it's the first Marantz product that allows you to update the firmware via Internet, rather than taking it in to a service center to get the ROM flashed. Considering how coy Apple has been with Airplay, I figure a lot is likely to change with this product once Lion comes out - picture/video streaming, for example? If you dig around in the menus, way down deep in options is "Add new feature" which prays to the Internet and finds nothing at the moment. Likewise, there's no new OS for the receiver, and there really should be.
The whole product has a deeply "beta-test" feel to it, as if it were rushed out the door in time to make the market ahead of Lion. I'm pretty sure the guys who wrote the manual, the guys who designed the remote and the guys who designed the UI have yet to have a meeting together. I think that the Marantz NR1602 is going to be a hell of a device once Marantz works out the bugs and ships new software for it. Until then, I'd recommend holding off. I used to make a lot of money as an audiovisual consultant and traded this box for 10 rack spaces worth of professional gear and *I* found the setup to be janky, bootstrapped and byzantine. The whole point of a "setup wizard" is to make things easier but to be perfectly honest, I have a hard time imagining the casual users this product is aimed at ending up with anything other than a hair-tearing experience as things sit now.
I did a lot of research on the NR1602 before purchasing it and found not a single hands-on review so I figured I'd do the world a favor by writing one. I'll update this one as the situation develops but for those of you looking to make the jump: If you can wait a little, do so. The software on this device is not yet ready for prime-time.
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Marantz NR1602 AV ReceiverSmall in size, not in features. While the NR1602 maintains the same chassis as the NR1601, the feature set has increased exponentially. With second zone audio, networking and streaming capabilities, the NR1602 is a full-featured receiver in a small package. Other features include a 7 channel discrete amplifier (50 watts x 7), network/streaming of Internet radio, Napster, Pandora and more, up-scaling HDMI to HDMI 1080 video, four HDMI inputs, plus it's certified Control4, Crestron and AMX compatible.
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