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I got this system for my girlfriend’s parents this christmas. I was looking for a budget system but did not want to buy something that 18 months from now would be put in the landfill. I also did not want to get a system that visually over took their living room. Finally, I wanted something that wasn’t overly complicated. Two out of three isn’t bad.

I’ll start with the problems. Why is it that home theatre has to be so confusing? There are loads of buttons on the remote control, buttons that do multiple actions on the receiver, and hook ups on the back of the receiver galore. There is a small rectangular port on the back that is near the “monitor” jack that looks like it should hold a card, but it is not marked and the sales staff have no idea what it is for. I suppose the consumer wants “choice”, and that is why there are so many options on this receiver, but it is so annoying when you figure out a sound setting for watching a movie, only to have it inadvertantly set to something else when the father-inlaw tries to turn up the volume. If there was a way to set up the sound preferences and then “lock” it in place so bumbling fingers and poor eye sight don’t change the sound, I would be happy. It seems needlessly complicated and far too easy to mess the settings once you figured it out.

Another minor quible is with the volume control. The knob is large and right in the middle where it is supposed to be. What I found confusing is the attenuation starts at -80 with the numbers increasing to -40, -20,-5 as the volume goes up. What is confusing is instead of maximum volume being zero (which is how attenuation is supposed to work) it continues from 0 to 10, 30, 60. It is supposed to be either -80 up to 0 or 0 up to 80. Again, unnecessarily confusing.

Now for the good stuff. The receiver and speakers are all in a silver gray matt finish and fits well in a standard living room. The sub is powered and has a volume control at the back to adjust the level of bass you prefer. It doesn’t sound muddy or sloppy and works very well with the satelite speakers. Don’t get me wrong, these are cheap speakers, but they do work quite well given their expected use. Music sounds okay (though there is little sound stage), and radio comes in clearly. Where this system performs well is with movies as that is what it is really designed for.

Movies are encoded in surround sound methods that I won’t pretend to understand. The fact is that when we hooked up the Yamaha and watched LOTR we were all happy with the results. No, you won’t question if there is an Ork behind you, but you will get a reasonable suggestion of “surround” depending on the encoding you chose.

I bought this at the big box store that has the demo units on a shelf unplugged. There was no opportunity to sound test it, and if I had asked them to set it up I doubt they would have been able to. So why did I buy this? Simply, the brand of Yamaha is well respected with entry and mid level home theatre. The two year warranty, however, was the ringer for me. Other Japanese brands had any where from 1 year to 90 days on their warranty, so clearly Yamaha beat them all with 2 years. At least for the next 2 years the only thing I will have to worry about with the in-laws is them calling up to figure out how to turn the surround back on after sitting on the remote.

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