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(More customer reviews)You know how it is. Take a look at your entertainment area. How many pieces of hardware are sitting there? A TV, a cable box, maybe DirecTV; a CD player, maybe an iPod dock. DVD player? Blu-ray disc player? Old VCR? An Airport Express for AirTunes, perhaps? How about a PS3, an Xbox, a Wii? Apple TV? Slingbox? Hulu player? Mac mini media station? How many speakers you got? 5? 7? 9? Maybe there are speakers elsewhere in the house, and you'd like to be able to watch TV here and listen to music there? Do you like Pandora satellite radio? What about XM HD?
Of course, all your hardware is cutting edge, just bought yesterday, right? No? HDMI, component, S-video, coax analog video, coax digital video - how many formats you got? Your TV - is it 1080p, or 1080i? What about your audio? All digital? Digital optical, digital coax - or do we have some good old RCA jacks? White/Red left/right? Or are we talking about a full surround setup? (Maybe you're like me and have a legacy pair of Tannoy bookshelf monitors, coaxial cones, that sound fantastic bi-amped. And maybe that last sentence sounded like the ravings of a lunatic.)
I don't know what you got. And neither do the good folks at Onkyo. So in this one grand box, they have provided doggone near as many solutions as you could possibly need.
For video, it can take 6 HDMI inputs, and send them to one or two outputs, a main (and if desired a sub) output. Upcoding can be disabled; or everything can be auto-upcoded; or you can force everything to upcode to a certain rez. (Since my old TV only supports 1080i, I needed the ability to force up and downcoding to that format; the lower-line Onkyos only upcode to 1080p and that wouldn't have worked.) There are also about a gazillion other ways to input video into this beast, and you can configure the machine to link any input to any button on your remote. For example, I have my PS3 coded to the 'game' circuit, whereas my DirecTV box is "CBL/SAT". The machine is fully HDMI 1.4a compliant, which means upcoming 3D will work right out of the box; and it supports HDMI audio return, although when you really find out what that is you may not want it.
For audio, it can take 2 optical audio, or 3 digital coaxial audio, or about 1 gazillion RCA-type audio inputs, amplify them, and output them direct to your speakers. If you want a 9.2 super surround setup, with R,L, center, R/L front high,R/L front wide, R/L surround, R/L surround rear, and a powered sub or two: this box gets the job done. However, in that case, there are no amps to spare for zone 2 or zone 3, which means that you'll need a separate power amp to power those separate zones.
If you want powered zones, you have to sacrifice some of your surround speakers. For me, I wanted 5.1 surround with bi-amped front speakers (the tweeters and woofers of the fronts are powered each by a different amp), so I lost powered Zone 2; I still have powered Zone 3. Zone 3 routes to a pair of outdoor speakers on my deck, so I can relax with Pandora Internet jazz (ah, Thelonious my old friend) while my lady is inside watching the cackling buffoons on Project Runway in all their hideous glory.
You do have to hook the machine up to a hub that is gatewayed to your Internet connection, and that has to be a wired connection. (I use an Airport Express to bridge my home wireless network to a cat6 cable that connects to the Onkyo; this setup has the added benefit of AirTunes, which, via a mini-phones cable (or 3.5 mm mini optical to TOSLINK, your choice) serves up my iTunes library to the amp, and that process can be controlled from my Mac laptop or iPhone.)Wow, it gets technical. Thank goodness the Onkyo menu is clear and easy to read. I will say, make sure the Internet is up, connected, and actively serving to your Onkyo before you power the Onkyo on for the first time; or you will have some difficulty getting connected later (you'll have to go into the Network setup area and 'save' the network settings.) The firmware upgrade is highly recommended. It takes 45 minutes; the RHMI setting has to be 'off', and the amp has to be in USB mode for it to work; that was annoying.
Sound fidelity is awesome and the settings are intuitive. I especially appreciate the myriad ways of dealing with power-on loudness; you can make sure you never blow out your speakers, or your eardrums, by navigating the easy to use menu.
One thing I wish I'd known before I bought this unit: the powered Zone 2s and Zone 3s can only accept analog sources. That means that optical audio and coax-digital audio cannot be piped to your zone 2 and zone 3. Luckily, most devices that serve that kind of audio also output analog audio; you can just plug that audio into a separate input and route *that* to Zone 2 or 3 instead. Annoying, but understandable; probably saved Onkyo a few bucks. Internet radio behaves like an analog source for this purpose, and that's a blessing.
The remote, which is backlit and easy to use, can also be programmed as a universal remote, which is handy, although it is IR, not RF, so it will never truly be the Master of All Remotes.
Internet radio on this baby is AWESOME. I can't get over having my own Pandora station outside on my deck; Onkyo also contracted with a company called vTuner that provides about a thousand channels. The Pandora client is full featured, lets you reconfigure and approve/disapprove of music, and even shows the album cover art on screen. Pandora streams to this beast at 128 kbps joint stereo, which is PandoraOne quality - regular Pandora is 64kbps aacPlus joint, which is compressed and tinny - but you don't need to subscribe, and I've yet to hear an ad.
Let's not forget Audyssey DSX: it is a little mike that you put at ear height at each listening area (i.e., chair) in your quiet surround sound field, and the machine automatically configures each speaker level and EQ to preset specs. It works really well, and the task is something that took dozens of hours to do by hand in older surround sound setups.
So yeah, this baby tames the confusion, knocks out its opponents (there is nothing else available below the $5K pricepoint that accomplishes everything I mentioned above) and unifies the audio-video title, sort of like Mike Tyson did to the heavyweight championship. I think you gotta be a little bit of an AV geek to set it up, but my lady, who is not all that geeky, instantly understood the remote - it's pretty much nearly one-touch.
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Onkyo TX-NR1008 9.2-Channel Network Home Theater ReceiverThe TX-NR1008 is an upper-mid-range A/V powerhouse designed to give you maximum set-up flexibility in the home. Its 9.2 speaker channels let you enjoy a multichannel source in your main room, plus powered audio in two other rooms. Or you can use the extra channels to take full advantage of the new surround dimensions of Audyssey DSX and Dolby Pro Logic IIz. Other processing highlights include DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD for pristine lossless audio on Blu-ray Disc, and HDMI upscaling of all video sources to 1080p with Faroudja DCDi Cinema. As a network A/V receiver compatible with Windows 7 and DLNA, the TX-NR1008 lets you stream audio from your PC or from internet radio channels such as vTuner and SIRIUS. Set up and calibration are easy and accurate, thanks to ISF video calibration, a new overlaid graphical on-screen display, and Audyssey room correction and equalization. Bi-amping capability and a smorgasbord of the latest connections complete what is an outstanding entertainment package.
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