Save Pioneer VSX-1019AH-K 7-Channel A/V Receiver (Black)

I've had the receiver for about a week now and overall I've been fairly impressed with it. The audio out is simply superb while the video upsampling to 1080i really does do a fantastic job. There are a few pain points, but in general this product is really a great value for the money.

The setup was a fairly straightforward. There are 4 HDMI and 2 component inputs so I was easily about to hook up my cable, xbox and wii. Speaker setup was a little tricky as the connections are a little close together I would suggest investing in some stereo connectors as this makes a rather annoying job super easy.

The MCACC auto setup is a little tricky too, at least for me. The device kept wanting to make my front and center speakers "large". This resulted in less bass and a slight tinny sound. After the first time through, I set the speakers to "small" and redid the MCACC setup. After that, I had the sound I wanted. Its not quite as warm as my previous receiver (an old Outlaw Audio 1050) but I'm quite ok with it. The music is true and well balanced. So be warned you may want to run the MCACC tests twice. It is worth it to use there setup as it really does deliver wonderful sound.

One sad point, since there is a USB port on the front (and ipod port too!) I tried to connect my gPhone and play some of my music off that. Sadly the Pioneer did not recognise the gPhone as a music device so I couldn't get that to work. Sad, but not unexpected. This is something I'll continue to play with. In the meanwhile I can use one of the extra audio connections in the back.

There are a few negatives though. The receiver runs really hot. I know this is common with receivers in this price range but I was still surprised. I can barely kep my hand on the top, that's how hot it gets. This is not something to put into a space without good airflow.

The controller isn't very good either. This isn't unexpected really. If you were hoping to pair down to one remote with a receiver purchase, this certainly won't be the one. Its too simple and can't really do anything complex.

Finally a note for those of you hooking this up to your cable box. I have a motorola DVR with DVI out. Sadly, when I tried to run the DVI cable box to the HDMI input port on the receiver, I got a blank screen. Turns out this is due to DRM. The cable box thinks that the receiver is a copying device and shuts down the connection. There are two work arounds for this. The first is to hook the audio from the cable box to the receiver and the HDMI to the tv. This wasn't very elegant to me so I went for option two. In this option, you still hook the audio to the receiver however you use the component out from the cable box and go to the receiver with that as well.

The second solution, to me, was the winner since I no longer had to switch both the receiver and the TV's input source. I can tell no difference on the HD channels either - they still look great on a LCD. The other great benefit of this solution, the regular cable channels are upsampled too! This provided a noticeable improvement to the vast majority of channels. Note that this is an issue you'll have with every A/V receiver on the market today as this is an issue with older cable boxes (and possibly newer ones too).

For the money, this system really is one of the best out there. Get more detail about Pioneer VSX-1019AH-K 7-Channel A/V Receiver (Black).