Sony STRDH820 AV Receiver

November 12th, 2011 3 Comments »

I had mentioned that my Onkyo TX-SR606 was dying? The well known HDMI switching issue finally got on my nerves to the extent that it needed replacing. The replacement? A Sony STRDH820. Surprisingly, despite the brand it costs a lot less than the Onkyo (and Onkyo’s successor model) whilst providing you with more or less the same functionality.

The Sony unit itself is slightly smaller and lighter than the Onkyo, but sports the same glossy black front allowing it to hide in the corner of my room unnoticed until you turn it on. That’s where it starts to differentiate itself from the Onkyo. Like the old unit, it has an auto-configuration mode in which you plug a supplied microphone in, plonk it in the prime listening position of your room, and allow the amp to work out the distance between the speakers, the size of your speakers, and adjust various parameters accordingly. Now, with the Onkyo, I resorted to configuring these parameters manually because the automatic settings were rubbish – the front centre channel was dampened considerably by the automatic equalisation to start with! With the Sony, auto-configuration works perfectly for me and I’ve left it as it advised. Spatial separation of the channels appears to be much better in Pro-Logic II Movie mode with the stereo effects of TV programs much more obvious, and, I can’t be 100% sure, but it seems that the amp may be adjusting the vocals of TV programs dynamically to keep them at a steady volume, so even in low listening conditions, the vocals are clear (if slightly muffled on occasions).

Sony Amp 1

I decided to include this photo on the left of the amp all connected up so as you can get an idea of scale compared to the Nintendo Wii above it. I do wish I’d dusted before I’d taken the photo though.

Anyway, back to the techie specs… I chose this amp for one main feature: Up-conversion. I have my TV on the wall quite a distance from the gadget boxes, and I have run a single HDMI cable up to it. The Sony STRDH820 will take any input source (component, composite or HDMI) and send it out of the HDMI port up to the telly. The Wii is now connected using component cables to give the best possible image, and my PS3 and Freesat box are connected by HDMI. The Sony will switch quickly between each source with no more than a second’s delay which to be honest is probably my TV thinking about it. If you aren’t fussed about the up-conversion feature, maybe you don’t have any analogue devices or maybe you are fine sending multiple cables to your TV and manually switching between TV sources and amp sources, you can save about £100 and get the STRDH520. But for simplicity, the 820 gives you much less to set up and think about.

Sony Amp 2What else? It supports 7.2 speakers… which consists of 7 surround speakers and 2 subwoofers, but I choose to run at a traditional 5.1  seeing no values in 7.anything at the moment. In fact, Sony haven’t made up their mind how 7.2 should work, giving you two options – the extra two speakers are either at the rear for a better surround effect, or up high at the front for vertical spacialization. Oooh, and it supports 3D. Well, by support, it’ll pass 3D images from a source device up to your TV… so it’s 3D ready in effect. I have a 3D ready amp, a 3D capable PS3, I just need a 3D TV to complete the trio. Another neat feature is the capability to customise the source label displayed on the LCD display. Not a massive feature I know, but a nice touch allowing me to display ‘Freesat’ instead of ‘SAT/CATV’ and ‘Wii’ instead of ‘Video-1’.

So, what don’t I like about it? This is probably what you are most interested in if you’ve landed on this review… So far I’ve discovered an issue between the amp and my Humax FOXSAT-HDR Freesat receiver. When you play a recording, or pause and play, or fast forward, or skip adverts, whenever the audio resumes playing you get a short burst of static. Everything works fine, but the noise is a bit annoying. I think it’s today with the interruption in the stream of digital data and instead of ignoring the corrupted data, it plays it. Another more irritating issue concerns the standby passthrough mode. Let’s say you wanted to watch TV, but didn’t want the extra oomph of the amplifier and were happy to use the TV speakers – like when CBeebies is on. Passthrough allows you to turn the amp off (or in to standby to be precise) and pass the audio straight through from your device to your TV. The Sony amp offers the ability to play the audio through ‘Amp’ or ‘Amp+TV’’. In Amp mode, audio is only ever played through the amp speakers, and in standby mode no audio is passed through to the TV. In Amp+TV mode, the audio is always passed through to the TV regardless, meaning that when the amp is on, you get an echo of the audio through the TV speakers as well! Now the solution to the problem is to use the latter mode and turn the TV volume down unless you need it. What the real solution should be is a third amp option to output Amp only when turned on, but passthrough to TV only when in standby. If you read this, Sony, please stick this in a firmware update.


Channel 4 HD on Freesat

April 19th, 2011 No Comments »

Channel 4 HD

As of today, Channel 4 HD should be available on Freesat at channel 126. This brings the total number of HD channels on the free satellite service to 4 complimenting BBC One HD, BBC HD and ITV1 HD. All we need now is for Channel 5 to get their act together and we’ll have a high definition offering from all five main UK broadcasters. On my wish list still are E4 HD, BBC 2 HD (instead of BBC HD) and the option on the Freesat boxes to automatically swap standard definition channels for their HD equivalent by changing an option in the settings menu somewhere. I wonder if anyone at Freesat or Humax will ever read this??

Humax FOXSAT-HDR – Revisited

April 6th, 2011 No Comments »

In contrast to my last home cinema gadget post, this home cinema gadget is brilliant and is still improving. I abandoned Sky a couple of years ago in favour of Freesat, being limited to satellite-based services at the time due to the lack of analogue and Freeview signals. Since the digital switchover this is now less of a problem, but I wouldn’t swap Freesat for Freeview at the moment at all. The Humax FOXSAT-HDR was the first Freesat box with HD and PVR (recording) functionalities. It is still the best box out there over 2 years on. I’m revisiting this now for one main reason – Humax have released an updated box. My box came with a 320GB hard drive, which I’ve never seen at more than 60%. The new models are now available with 500GB which in theory can store up to 300 hours of standard definition footage, or 125 hours of HD footage.

Other than that, the box is identical which just goes to show how future-proof this box was. There are currently 3 HD channels available on Freesat: BBC One HD, BBC HD and ITV1 HD. There’s a fourth if you manually tune in to Luxury Life HD. Rumours are running around saying that we’ll also be getting Channel 4 HD which is my biggest want since the beginning. If you pop the box in to non-freesat mode you can manually tune in to Channel 4 HD right now which is broadcasting Free-to-Air. What else is great about this box then? BBC iPlayer, that’s what. The box has a built in network port which allows it to connect to the Internet, and via the red button on a BBC channel you have access to the iPlayer. There’s also a reserved channel ready for the ITV Player, but it’s not live yet and there’s been no official announcement.

The box is a lot cheaper now than when I purchased it, but even after abandoning Sky, based on the cheapest subscription at the time I broke even after 18 months. To be honest at first I missed Sky One because of shows like 24 and the occasional Terry Pratchett specials, but now I’m not bothered… I don’t miss the subscription channels at all and certainly don’t believe they warrant the £19.50 a month that Sky charge for the basic package. The Humax FOXSAT-HDR is working just fine and will carry on being the perfect solution until my ultimate new TV system is finished (which will be in a year or so).

For those who like to tinker, there’s an unofficial update out for the FOXSAT-HDR which enables a DLNA service on the box, letting you stream recorded programs from the box to another DLNA client such as an Xbox, PS3 or PC. I’ve not tested it out yet mainly because I don’t think The Wife would be very pleased if she couldn’t watch Strictly Come Dine With My Big Fat Gypsy Embarrassing Illness due to a bricked satellite box. If you are braver than I am, check out the update here.

Onkyo TX-SR606 – Revisited

March 21st, 2011 5 Comments »

The Onkyo TX-SR606 AV Receiver currently forms the hub of my home cinema. It takes inputs from my Freesat box, PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii, and outputs video over HDMI up to the TV and audio to the subwoofer and 5 satellite speakers. Now, well over 2 years on since I purchased it back in October 2008, it’s time to tell you how it’s doing in the long run now that the initial excitement of a new toy purchase has worn off. I’ll start with the good points because, to be honest, I’m not that pleased overall.

The sound quality of this beast is amazing. The auto-configuration is pants. In theory you are supposed to plug in a microphone and let the amplifier calibrate the settings whilst you move the microphone around the room to different optimum listening points. I spent the first few weeks playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare wondering why I couldn’t hear people on screen talking who were directly in front of me, yet if I turned by back on them they could be heard loudly behind me. It turns out that the automatic equalizer was dampening vocals but only for the front speakers… strange. So after resetting to defaults and calibrating manually I was very impressed even through my cheap Yamaha speakers.

Now for the bad points. This receiver was priced at almost £400, so you’d expect it to be pretty near faultless for that kind of money. The main selling point for me was the up-conversion to HDMI of analogue inputs. This meant that no matter what type of connection I plugged in to the amp (HDMI, component, composite, etc.) the receiver would convert it to digital and send it out over HDMI. The obvious advantage here is that I now only require a single cable to be sent up to the telly and all the source switching is done on the receiver itself. Effectively this turns my telly in to nothing more than a monitor. At first, this process worked perfectly. I could switch between different inputs running at different resolutions with no problems. More recently though this has started to play up. The Wii, connected using component cables, stopped displaying at all. I narrowed this down to the resolution auto-detect in the receiver and after setting it to a manual resolution it seemed to work for a while. Now it works sometimes, but usually only after switching the receiver off and on again (of course). HDMI also has a similar problem occasionally too. I can switch from the Freesat box to the PS3, but if I try to switch back to the Freesat box I’m greeted with a No Signal message until I perform another power cycle of the receiver.

After Googling it turns out this may be a common problem with this model and can “easily” be fixed by replacing a number of components on the circuit boards. Using a soldering iron. Hmm, yeah I probably could give that a go, but I’m more likely to burn a hole through the boards or generally tin the whole surface given my skills with a soldering iron.

In short, I can’t recommend this amp. I don’t know whether the successor models (the TX-SR607 or TX-SR608) suffer from the same problems, but when the time comes to replace this I’ll be trying something different. I’ll be purchasing an AV Receiver which is purely HDMI, and if I ever need to connect any old devices, such as the Wii, I’ll buy a cheap analogue-digital converter off eBay and run it via that.

Technika TK51R Remote Control

February 9th, 2011 3 Comments »

Technika TK51RHow much gadget can you get for £6.09? Well, that sum will buy you a replacement remote control for your old telly. Picture the scene, your 18-month old child has just decided to find out what happens if he throws a TV remote control down the toilet. It is rescued from the aromatic descents of the toilet bowl, washed and dried for a couple of days before being tested. It doesn’t work. However over the next few days it slowly jumps in to life operating all functions but the volume. Then it dies again. Poppy wasBroken Bush Remote Control fine with the TV being stuck on S4C and was just as mesmerised by Peppa Pig in Welsh as in English. But… enough was enough, even after pulling the thing apart it still wouldn’t work, so I ventured out to find the cheapest compatible remote control I could find. Tesco, where Every Little Helps apparently, had something little to help in the form of the Technika TK51R universal remote control. It’s cheap and operates only a single device, but it has the all-important Guide button for controlling the Freeview EPG (you’d be surprised at how many cheap remotes offer analogue only controls… haven’t they heard of the digital switchover? Or maybe that’s why they are cheap…). I opened up the user manual and located the Bush manufacturer codes, entering them one by one until they switched off the telly. Quickly, I powered it Technika TK51Rback on and tried the other buttons on the remote – nope, the guide button didn’t work. So, I kept going until the next code powered the telly off, the guide button didn’t work again. 2 other half-working codes later and I’d depleted the Bush codes, so I decided to try the device search function. This consists of pressing the power button on the remote until your TV turns off. Each press of the power button cycles to a new internal device code and when your TV switches off, you press OK to save it. After 40 half-working codes which powered the TV off, but only part controlled it in weird and wonderful ways, I lost count. But, eventually I’m happy to say that the £6.09 replacement remote control made peace with my TV and we can now finally change the channel from Pobol y Cwm to Hollyoaks.

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