Sony DAV-C900 Home Theater in a Box
Sony DAV-C900 Home Theater in a Box
USER REVIEWS
[Oct 10, 2003]
Cut Throat
Casual Listener
Strength:
It worked well for a while; great system for smaller rooms.
Weakness:
Poor quality. Lame remote. What a piece of junk. Wish I would have read the reviews before purchasing. My unit just blanked out tonight in the middle of a movie - for no reason, the picture was gone. And then my audio signal from the TV/satellite has been screwy for months, sometimes coming out of just one speaker, or nothing at all. I'm guessing that based on all the other negative reviews, this thing really DOES overheat and fry itself after a while. Not sure it's worth spending the $$ for repair. Thinking I should just buy a new head unit (won't be a Sony), keep the speakers, and splice in some new connectors for the speaker wires. Might take the old DVDC900 and put some rounds through it with my SKS. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY ON THIS SONY PRODUCT - THEIR TVs ARE GREAT, THEIR HOME THEATER SYSTEMS ARE NOT!! |
[Jul 28, 2003]
Efim
Casual Listener
Strength:
Compact, easy to set up, good looks, included speaker stands, acceptable sound quality, has been reliable for about 2 years now.
Weakness:
Horrible remote. There are other systems on the market, as I know now, which would give you better sound and cost less (such as Pioneer HDT-520DV, for example). The setup, as everybody said, was a breeze. Included speaker stands look good and spare you from either buying separately or wall-mounting. Remote control stinks. The person designing it managed to create the layout without any logic and with a miriad of tiny butons with just as tiny a signs. No major problems with DVD player for over a year now, although it certainly does not like scratches on the disk. Disk exchange is slow and mechanism is loud. Sound quality very decent for movie playback, subwoofer volume is adequate, (granted, I have a small living room, but in general I would not want my windows shattered by 25 HZ 150 DB sounds). Music playback is more than acceptable for casual listener, which I am. If you have a discriminating ear - look elsewhere. Or if you are deafened by years of REALLY powerful subwoofers shaking your walls and shrinking your brains - this is not for you. For the humble rest of us this sound quality will do fine. By the way, my DAV came wothout a manual; I called Sony and had it delivered free of charge in about a week. |
[Jul 14, 2003]
George Porter
Audio Enthusiast
Strength:
Nicely styled tower speakers. Much better looking than the Panasonic SC-HT900 tower spekers. This system has SACD. The Panasonic does not.
Weakness:
Everything else. This system should sell for 300 dollars to be of any value. But it still would not sound good. I couldn't believe that any 1000 dollar systeam could sound this bad! I kept wondering where the music was. I demoed it at the Circuit City and we kept playing with the wires thinking speakers were unplugged. Then we swapped out of of the 5 for another speaker just to prove to ourselves that the tower speakers were really that muted. I grabbed the same dvd and played it on the similar Panasonic home theater system (SC-HT900) which sells for 499 dollars. The Panasonic was incredible by comparison and for half the price! Sony has a passive subwoofer which is worthless. The tower speakers are completely void of depth, frequency range, dynamic range, etc. Muffled and flat are the 2 words that come to mind when listening to this system. Similar Products Used: Yamaha and Sony surround receivers. |
[May 07, 2003]
johnbrownsvaporizer
Audio Enthusiast
Strength:
the speaker stands are cool
Weakness:
THE TOTAL PACKAGE IS WEAK REALLY LOW POWER THE SUB IS HORRIBLE biggest pile of crap on the market... i have this setup for my bedroom, and it sucks bigtime. had it for 2 days and it died. sony authorized repair shop had it for 3 months and was finally able to fix it... guess what, a year later, same thing happened. sony tried to charge me $199 to fix + shipping both ways. i took the unit to the sony authorized repair shop that originally fixed it and they said that they dont mess w/ sony products anymore because they suck and theyre too hard to repair. $150 and 3 weeks later from another repair shop, the davc900 is back in my bedroom. the tech at this repair shop said that the head unit heats up way too hot very quickly. thats what keeps frying it. SO I DONT RECOMMEND THIS PIECE OF CRAP UNLESS YOU HAVE A FAN DIRECTLY OVER IT TO KEEP IT COOL! FORGET THAT I DONT RECOMMEND IT AT ALL, THE SUB SUCKS AND THE SYSTEM HAS NO POWER. DONT BUY THIS THING...UNLESS YOUR LIKE TAKING IT TO THE REPAIR SHOP EVERY YEAR. Similar Products Used: SONY......NEVER AGAIN |
[Oct 08, 2002]
GreatBop
Audio Enthusiast
Strength:
Easy to set up "Digital Cinema Surround" acctually works. Aesthetics - they look sweet indeed Not bad when all speakers are used at the same time.
Weakness:
ONLY ONE optical input No component cable input err.. crappy speaker wires and cables out of the box. The speaker's weakness comes out when forced to play a music cd in 2 ch. stereo. few corrections: Price is in CDN dollars.. Product Year: 2002 (Dav 990) I originally was shopping around for a HTS to play games (specifically GCN) and watch movies with. I was gonna go spend 6000 cdn on a bunch of speakers either from Energy's connoiseur or Paradgim's monitor series. I realized I was going overboard... so i decided to get an HTiB instead. I did get the system cheap. Drawback though was that i couldn't return it. I was just so PO'ed to find out Energy Take 5.2 can be haggled down to 750 cdn (tax included)... Add a receiver and a dvd and it wouldn't cost that more than what i paid for the system.. It acctually isn't bad when used for watching movies or playing games in surround with. The subs... it's not bad... You play around with it.. and you'd learn to use some of the features (like cinema a b or c)... Virtual Speakers acctually do work! All of a sudden, i felt myself surrounded by more than 5 speakers! It's won WhatHifi Mag's best HTiB of the year (C550 in europe) ... PScanning DVD with SACD playback isn't too shabby either. |
[Aug 26, 2002]
wolf1
Casual Listener
Strength:
Looks good with easy setup.
Weakness:
Does not work after only 3 months. System went dead one night while watching TV. No storm or lightning nor power surge. The system was on a new surge protector. After 3 months in repair at Sony certified repair center in town they called to say the system is fried and that I owe them $25.00. No warranty coverage on a system I only had for three months! They replaced several chips and then announced a power surge had destroyed it? What a rip!!! There was noooo power surge. |
[Aug 15, 2002]
dahmer
Audio Enthusiast
Strength:
Great looks! Great sound! Great price!
Weakness:
None! More then enough for my bedroom. Maybe it would be slightly under-powered for a large room, but for me it is fine. Easy as hell to set up. All connectors are color coordinated and the speakers cable(wires) are all long enough. Great looks. Matches my XBR Wega perfectly. This setup is my bedroom and it is fantastic for a HTB set up. The bass is decent, the highs are there and SACD playback is fine. It puts out enough power(more then enough) for my bedroom. Similar Products Used: None, this is my first bedroom DD-DTS setup. My main(living room) system is: Mitsubishi WS65908 RPTV Zenith DTV1080 Parasound AVC-2500u Rotel RTC-965 Pre Amp----FOR SALE Toshiba SD9200 DVD |
[Jun 02, 2002]
Kevin Modisane
Casual Listener
WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DAV-C900 AND THE DAV-S800 |
[Apr 02, 2002]
Cut Throat
Casual Listener
Strength:
Sleek design, easy set up, great ''bang for the buck''
Weakness:
Perhaps a bit weak for ''rocking out'' to audio CDs, but still pretty damn good sound coming from such a compact system! After reading the negative reviews, I was a little worried that I had purchased this system. BUT, after setting it up and fine-tuning the speaker levels & location, I love it! I have a small living room with hardwood floors, and the subwoofer is more than adequate. 2Ch stereo playback is fine, and the DVD playback quality is excellent. I have the system set up with my 27" Sony Vega TV and their SLV-81 VCR. For my needs, this is an excellent, high-quality system that I didn''t have to spend a month''s salary on. If you''re an audio snob, this system isn''t for you - it''s too simple. But for people who want a sleek, affordable, quality digital A/V system, look no further. |
[Mar 24, 2002]
AARON L
AudioPhile
my summary is this, i read a review here that says that this dvd player breaks and won''t read dual layer dvd. I have gone thru 3 playstation2 game consoles since they came out in 1999. all stopped playing dual layer dvd games and movies. this may possibly be a sony wide recurring problem. Similar Products Used: playstation2 |