Phenominal sound; incredible "theatre" sound experience

wierd remote

Wonderful, natural sound. Excellent for DVD Dolby digital and DTS. Very, very good at Dolby Pro Logic (vastly better than the Sony it replaces.) When playing CD music, it sounds like the artist is inside the walls of our home.

Similar Products Used:

Sony dolby Pro-Logic; Pioneer, etc

Clear sound, awesome price, dolby digital. 2 year warrenty.

None

Well it's been about 4 months now since I got this receiver from Sears. I finally got the DVD player for my PC. Some people say DVD for PC suck or it's not good enough. I say It's awesome if you own this receiver and hooked on to your PC. The receiver runs awesome in my system with my speakers which are pair of Sony ss-MF 515 for main, pair of Acoustic Research AR-318PS for main, a Acoustic Research C225PS center speaker, and old argon speakers for rear but I do not know the model name. No subwoofer. When I set this receiver's bass and treble to maximum, you get more than enough bass. I watched the "SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" on my DVD and used Dolby Digital. It sounds so good! The sound effects came from german machine guns empty shell bouncing sound just too good to be true! The CD audio is awesome too. I listen to every kind of music but the Starwars soundtack actually kicks every other music because it sounds so clear! My major use of this receiver is to use as my PC speaker system, this receiver makes you never like the PC speakers system ever. It's not even worth to compare to PC speakers. Too bad that this model is discontinued and it's selling out very quickly at sears :( My bottom line is go to sears and get this receiver if they have it. Oh don't forget the price match at sears! They match the internet site price without asking a single question! Well good luck on hunting this receiver!

Similar Products Used:

"this is update from my old review" My first digital receiver ever!

excellent DD, need to try DTS yet, sounds great, very well built

my speakers hamper its true acoustic ability, other than that none

First of all, thanks to everyone here who posted the overwhelming reviews of this product. It was these reviews that introduced me to and persuaded me to buy this reciever. I was not let down by the performance of the 5150.
In transition from the Sony, i noticed immediatly that the 5150 had a much better pre out for the sub. my normal listening level on my Cerwin Vega HT-s15 sub was about 75% on the sub volume to produce decent bass.

This little monster forced me to turn the sub down to about 40% on the volume, and sometimes its still to loud! It sounds much cleaner with the 90 hertz cut off on the pre out as well.
Besides that, it runs MUCH cooler, sounds much better especially on DVD's and music. The only thing holding me back now are my speakers. THey are old cheap Technics and KLH bookshelfs for the rear. This reciever is awesome and a must have!

Similar Products Used:

Sony-STR-DE525

Great sound, plenty of sound modes/DSP's, easy to setup, price

Remote is tricky at first; one more S-Video input would be great.

I bought this receiver mainly to process Dolby Digital from my DVD player and I have been quite impressed. Not only does the 5150 decode DD and DTS but can do so with a variety of DSP modes. I put in a few scifi DVD's to test the sound and I thought I was back in the theater.

The unit is fairly easy to setup and the manual straghtforward. The remote looks confusing at first but is easy to get used to. I've gone from four remotes to one which is a relief.

My only complaint is that there should be an extra S-Video input on the rear panel. There is a third on the front, but I don't envision using this anytime. They should have just moved it to the back. Also, the ability to route all video inputs into one monitor out would have been a nice feature.

All in all, I'm extrememly pleased with the unit. For the price, it's more than worth it.

Similar Products Used:

Sony 635

Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, S-Video switching, Clean sound

No light on the volume knob (But I knew that when I bought it)

When I bought this reciever I was debating over the Sony 935 and the Denon 2800. I can't believe I didn't just buy this one and put myself out of my misery sooner. I am very pleased by this product. I have had my dvd player for about a year while using a JVC Prologic reciever. I bought new speakers when I bought this Yamaha (Paradigm Mini Monitors and a cc350 center) for lack of money I saved my old surrounds. This setup rivals a lot of theatres I have been to. I love the sounds, I have watched the Matrix god knows how many times, but when I watched it with this player I actually caught myself dodging a few shots. I think Yamaha did a great job of bringing theatre quality (or better) sound to the home viewer. I read many of these reviews before ordering it from onecall.com for $391 which I recommend to anyone. The only draw back is not seeing the volume level in the dark since I had it on my old reciever I know what I am missing :) But as far as the remote goes it is great, I had a easy time setting it up and learning it, it controls all of my HT eq. I would like to also say that the S-video switching quality is great and is better than a RCA switcher it replaced. Hats off to Yamaha.

Similar Products Used:

JVC Pro Logic

Too few s-video inputs

What another reviewer said it true - "Can't route S-Video ins to composite outs and vice versa". Be aware of this. There are S-video inputs for a DVD and VCR and S-video outputs for a VCR and monitor, but no input for cable/satellite tv. Since there is no crossover this means that if you intend to view cable/satellite tv you must hook the monitor up to the composite(RCA jacks) output. If you do that you then can't use the s-video DVD input since only the s-video monitor output can be used. For this reason I am returning the Yamaha HTR-5150 and purchasing the Sony STR-DB930. Unfortunately for Yamaha they came up just a few s-video connections short.

To summarize, if you only have a DVD and VCR and TV with s-video connections you're golden. Add cable/satellite TV and since there is no crossover between s-video and composite, the s-video connections are useless. You must use all composite connections.

Overall, I think this is a very good receiver and a great value. The sound quality is quite good, there is plenty of dynamic headroom at normal listening volumes and the features are hard to beat for the money. Among these are individual level and delay controls for each channel, S-Video switching on three inputs and DTS. There are also a couple of big dislikes for me. One is that there is no 5 channel stereo option and the DSP modes that turn on the surround speakers don't sound good. The other is that the remote just isn't designed well as far as controlling other devices. I was hoping to reduce my number of remotes with the included A/V remote, but no luck, the Yamaha remote isn't worth using in that capacity.

Wow this amp is heavy compared to the Pioneer that it replaced. dolby digital is awsome no comparison to pro logic. I hooked this receiver up to a new Energyb Take 5 spaker set with 8 inch sub was disatisfied with sound at first seemed vey harsh after some fiddling changed speaker impedence switch on back of amp to 4-8 ohm and am very pleased.

at 399, great price good sound

Price, sound quality, reliability

inputs

First, I've had this unit for some time now and it sounds great and has been problem free! When I first got it, I thought the inputs it supported were great, but after adding a few new components I'm concerned about the inputs.

My latest addition to my collection is the Toshiba TW56H80 RPTV. It kicks A! I'm having trouble deciding on how to configure the setup on my reciever...

I had (previously) every component running through amp, but since the 5150 has no S-Video input for TV/DBS (and of course, no component inputs... who could have known?), my DirecTV output is degraded to a standard AV output to feed my TV... The TV itself has 2 sets of S-video (and of course, AV), 2 component, and 2 coax (antenna) inputs...

Therefore, do I NOT go through the receiver for DBS broadasts? well... YES, I guess. I don't want to sacrifice any signal quality (albeit, I think the difference between video and S-video is trite).

Anyway, for the first time, I wish I had more inputs!! But, to be fair, this reciever really is good and many folks out there will probabaly never need more inputs.

One obvious point that some may not realize... AV inputs go to the AV output monitor, and S-vid inputs go the S-vid output monitor.

The solution is to run the audio/s-vid output through my VCR, the audio on to the reciever and the s-vid direct to my TV - this gives me recording ability and no signal loss... but does require some clever macro programming of my MX-1000 remote.