Sony STR-DH810 7.1 Channel A/V Receiver

The Sony STR-DH810 7.1 Channel A/V Receiver offers an incredible array of sophisticated capabilities you'd never expect at a price so reasonable. And it's a Sony!

The DH810 has no fewer than seven high definition inputs—four HDMI 1.4 and three component, so you can hook up all of your home entertainment gear. If you've gone over budget on all that equipment you can save money by starting out using your DH810 as a 5.1 or 6.1 system and adding a speaker or two when your budget allows.

If you do go that route you'll especially appreciate the DH810's Auto Calibration feature. Just place the included microphone in your listening position and the unit will "fingerprint" the audio characteristics of your room for the optimal listening experience.

This being an A/V receiver, pictures are just as important as sound. Video is shot at 30 frames per second (fps). Motion pictures are shot at 24 fps. That's made showing movies on TV problematic since the earliest days of the medium. The latest Sony Blu-ray players feature 24p True Cinema Technology, which solves the problem elegantly. Your DH810 will pass the improved picture to your TV exactly as your Blu-ray player sends it. And thanks to x.v.Color those images will be more vivid and smoother than you've ever likely to have seen before. The x.v color range is 1.8 times greater than the RGB standard.

You can send audio to up to 10 rooms from a single DH810. Just add an optional Sony S-AIR Card to it and place optional S-AIR receiver/speaker systems in each room. It's great for parties when you want to pipe the music throughout the house.

Now here's a feature you might not even consider until you realize you need it: Assignable digital audio and video inputs. Let's say you don't need a separate audio connection for your Blu-ray player because you've hooked it up via an HDMI cable. (HDMI cables carry both video and audio.) You've hooked up a DVD player via component cables but you need to hook up a sound cable. You've already got an optical audio cable left over from your old setup. You can tell your DH810 to use that input for your DVD's audio input.

It may sound a little complex but when you're hooking things up you're likely to have a snap-your-fingers moment when you realize being able to pair audio and video inputs any way you please is a great convenience.

The audio you will get out of your DH810 will be simply stunning. Take a look at the Specifications tab. See all those Dolby and DTS surround sound codecs (processors) we listed? Well Sony adds a bunch of its own. We just ran out of room to list them all.

You can make it sound like you're in a jazz club when you listen to Miles Davis or a stadium when your crank up The Who. Those are two fairly common settings in the receiver world. But have you ever had an A/V receiver that could make your movies sound like you're watching them in Sony Pictures Entertainment's "Cary Grant Theater" cinema production studio? Or the "Kim Novak Theater" cinema production studio? You've never heard of them either but you know you're going to try them out as soon as you plug your DVD or Blu-ray player into your new DH810.

The DH810 is so good it can even work in its sleep. You can control the components hooked up to it without having to power it on. It's called standby pass through.

With all of the fantastic and useful features packed into the DH810 you don't think Sony would forget about all of the music you've got on your portable music player do you? Of course not. That's what its Digital Media Port is for. Plug in a DMP adapter (sold separately) and access music from your iPod, Walkman, Bluetooth device or your laptop.

The Sony STR-DH810 is one of the most capable A/V receivers available today. Buy one for yourself or get one to give as a gift. They'll think you paid twice as much as you did.