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Sony STR-DA3200ES A/V Receiver

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5 User Reviews

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• Reviewed by: misuds324

  Updated: 10-05-07

  Overall Rating: 4 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:5 Days

  Strengths: Flexibility, Value, Power, UpConversion of signals

  Weaknesses: Display could be larger, Desctiption of upconversion needed some study to understand

  Overall Evaluation: This replaces my old Sony AV - an STR-D990 which has served me well these last 15 years. With the purchase of a Toshiba DLP it was time to upgrade. After much studying this emerged as the best bang for my buck. I've only had it a few days but am very satisfied with this choice and wouldn't hesitate to recommend this unit.

• Reviewed by: Gundy Gunderson

  Updated: 04-25-07

  Overall Rating: 5 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:5 Days

  Strengths: price, easy setup, features, 5 year warranty

  Weaknesses: big, heavy (but that's typical, right?)

  Overall Evaluation: I have never setup one of these before and I found the setup very easy. I even bi-amped my 2 main front speakers. It has exactly what I want for the price. You could pay a lot more for a receiver and get a lot more features but those are for more advanced users so don't even worry about all those upconversion complaints on other reviews. (the way I understood it is this: 480i signals get upconverted to 480p which is hardly noticeable)...After reading the manual (and understanding it), this receiver takes an SD signal and upconverts it to 480p and sends it out the HDMI output. All other signals (up to 1080i) simply get passed through. For example, my DVD player upscales to 1080i and the receiver passes the signal through to the TV with no loss. My Dish Network standard definition signal (I haven't gotten HD yet, boo-hoo) gets upconverted to 480p.

• Reviewed by: pooter54

  Updated: 04-16-07

  Overall Rating: 5 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:7 Days

  Strengths: Excellent machine on both the audio and video aspects. This is the third sony es receiver I have owned and am well impressed with this unit as well. The 1080i hdmi conversion is a great add on.

  Weaknesses: The display could be a bit larger....

  Overall Evaluation: Overall a great purchase for the money. The next amp would be 5 to 6 hundred more which I could not justify....You will not go wrong with this receiver !

• Reviewed by: hackztor

  Updated: 12-24-06

  Overall Rating: 5 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:3 Days

  Strengths: Powerful, awsome upconversion to 1080i of ANY source even from composite, svideo, component, and hdmi. awsome audio functions. Hdmi supported. can do 1080p.

  Weaknesses: no upconversion to 1080p. this requires the 1500 dollar receiver. automatic setting of speakers could be a little more precise.

  Overall Evaluation: very good receiver. 1080i is very nice, requires more top of the line to do this from composite over the hdmi. Found this receiver for 600 dollars. defintly worth the price. my audio sounds good and i run everything to receiver and then one hdmi wire to my tv. pretty blue light on front when using surround sound. display can be dimmed to only stay on for a few seconds. Automatic setting of the speaker settings through included microphone. this worked pretty good.

• Reviewed by: drts

  Updated: 12-22-06

  Overall Rating: 5 Star Review

  Duration of ownership:

  Strengths: Excellent sound quality, Plenty of power, does not get too hot, Excellent up-conversion of cable box signals, HDMI pass through of 1080I work great. Super easy speaker calibration

  Weaknesses: The incremental changes in volume level are just 0.5 dB when using the remote so it is not very responsive to changes in the volume.

  Overall Evaluation: With a new KDS-55A2000 HDTV, I wanted a HDMI switching receiver that would provide excellent up-conversion of low resolution Standard Definition (SD) video sources from my cable box plus excellent 7.1 sound reproduction. I read the CNET reviews on the Pioneer, Onkyo, and JVC 7.1 receivers with HDMI switching and they all had issues and many users complained of them getting very hot and/or not doing that good of HDMI switching or up-conversion of video signals. It looked I was going to have to spend $1200-$2000 for a Denon to get what I wanted until the DA3200ES came out in November 2006. After testing it for a couple of weeks, I think this receiver has both excellent sound quality and very good video processing! The sound reproduction is what you would expect from an ES line Sony receiver and I think better than the Yamaha 5740 receiver that it has replaced in my home. And it does not seem to get that hot--about the same as the Yamaha.`Setup was like any other receiver. The speaker calibration was surprisingly simple since Sony provides a microphone for this purpose. I placed it on top of the back of the chair I normally use in the middle of the room and pushed the button to perform the calibration and it was done in about 30 seconds. Sony warns of very high volumes when the calibration is being performed, so I put some earplugs in my ears before I did the calibration. The earplugs reduced the sound level by about 20 dB so I did not even notice it as being loud. After doing the calibration I put in a DVD to listen to the sound reproduction from all of my speakers and the sound levels were balanced very well and the receiver's sound quality is excellent. `The receiver has very good HDMI switching and up-conversion of SD signals input by composite video, S-video, video/audio RCA connections. My cable gateway does not have an HDMI output, so I had to use video/audio RCA connections for the input and the video up-conversion to 1080i output from the receiver looks noticeably better than the SD signal input directly to the TV. It looks fine on a 55" HDTV. I tested a lot of different video hook ups combinations and for my system, the composite video and video/audio RCA connections had better picture quality reproduction through the u-conversion algorithms than using S-video (not sure why?). I recommend using the HDMI output to a TV if possible. Any input signal is automatically converted to 1080I when using the HDMI output to a TV with an HDMI input. My Toshiba DVD recorder has an HDMI output that can put out 480I, 720I or 1080I. When I played purchased DVD movies the video reproduced when using the 1080I signal from the receiver was better quality compared to the same DVD output directly to the HDTV. So 1080I pass through, in my opinion, works very well in this receiver. Next I tried a TIVO'd and DVD recording of the same purchased DVD. The purchased DVD was slightly better quality that the recorded SD copies of the same movie (recorded in the second highest quality; 2 hours total on the 4.7 G DVD-r) when using the 1080I HDMI output. `It is a excellent receiver/amplifier with very good video processing. I been enjoying movies without having somebody kicking the back of my chair or eating candy wrapped in plastic wrappers behind me in a theater! Others must be enjoying this receiver too, because the price has gone up from the $549 I got mine for two weeks ago to $739 at the same store.

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