Yamaha RX-V1700

Yamaha RX-V1700 - Fantastic. Bought it from my local specialist retailer when I traded a bunch of old audio components. I needed it after I bought a Wii and didn't have enough connections of the right type to cable it all up. I use a Plasma screen with no tuner or speakers attached and a (massive) pair of bi-wired Mission 733s for sound. The Yamaha is bewildering on the back at first until you realise that's just because it allows pretty much any format of input/output on any channel, RGB, Component, S-Video, HDMI or digital optical/coax. It drives the Missions and the plasma brilliantly and is an excellent choice for someone who wants to "go digital" in the future, as you won't need to replace this component at all. The dedicated Yamaha iPod dock is handy as well and it has a built in radio tuner too. Plus you can set up the remote to drive most of your other components and power a further two audio outputs as well as the primary video output.

I'm a complete novice when it comes to these things so took advice from an online store. The guy told me that this was the biggest bargain going. The brought in a new model which has some feature this one doesn't but he assured me I wouldn't need the updated feature anyway.

I got an electrician to install it but then followed the instructions to set the sound up myself - its simple you just connect the microphone and it does a self test.

I have it connected to a Sony Bravia and the sound and picture are excellent!

The Yamaha RX-V1700 is an excellent system. All it needs is to come with all the speakers. Has a serious subwoofer available and recommended.

This is a very good bang for the buck for the average consumer. It has enough power for the speakers (130 watts per channel), set up is quite easy that most novices can perform the task, and it sounds very good. It isn't audiophile quality but it is good enough that my old ears can't tell the difference. The different sound stages available at a click of a button is a nice feature as well. A negative comment is that controlling individual pairs of speakers is not easy. I would love having buttons on the remote that I can adjust the volume of the front, center, surrounds and subwoofer. Instead you have to go into a menu and set them manually which is not satisfactory. Another thing I absolutely detest, and the feature is on several other products, is it has a second zone. I do not know of a single person who uses it. The problem often crops up when you are messing with the remote and you accidentally press something that activates the second zone. You end up turning the whole unit off just so you get out of that loop. If the engineers absolutely think the consumer must have that feature give us a way to completely disable it so that no button on the remote can activate it. I would think 99% of the people would do so. It is useless.

Overall I am very happy with this unit.