Onkyo TX-SR805 7.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver (Black) Review

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(More customer reviews)Guess which company managed to get True HD and DTS HD into their next lineup of high end receivers. Onkyo of course!! Cutting edge technology filling your room with beautiful sound.
I received my Onkyo TX-SR805 in the mail yesterday and I couldn't be any more thrilled! The behemoth weighs in at 61 lbs. and you can tell it means business. Daunting as it may look, the setup is a breeze due to the fact that everything you plug into the receiver's many inputs, can be output to the TV through one simple HDMI cable. It upconverts any analog connection you can throw at it whether it's S-video, Component, or simple RCA. If you still have a Hi-Fi VCR or other Standard Definition electronics, I'd suggest investing in at least an S-Video cable for that, or if it does have an RGB Component Cable use that because even though it upconverts RCA it can only do so much for the picture quality. That being said it does upconvert all of these analog signals into 720p, 1080i. It DOESN'T UPCONVERT Composite connections to 1080p. The difference in the upconversion wouldn't be noticeable.
The integrated Faroudja DCDi technology is wonderful! If you thought that your 480p signal was decent before, wait till you see how well this deinterlacing works! Edges have much less noise and things in SD are cleaned up very well through the receiver.
Setup was easy as far as speaker configuration, the Audyssey MultEQ XT auto calibration system runs a speaker measurement set up for up to 8 listening positions in your room! so if you want it to take into account your entire living room seating arrangement, just move the little wired speaker microphone to each listening position and it does all the work.
Unlike some receivers like my recently sold Sony DG800, the receiver's setup menu can be output onto your TV screen. So instead of squinting at the receivers display from across the room, you can see everything right up on the TV screen. However, if you do like to tweak settings while watching TV you can choose not to have it output onto the TV.
If you're actually considering spending around $1000 on a receiver, THIS is the only thing you should be looking at! At the moment, the higher end Denon AVR4306 does just about everything that this Onkyo can do but the Onkyo Receivers are the FIRST receivers to truly decode DTS HD signals, and Dolby True HD! It's absolutely insane all the details that can come out of High Definition Surround Sound! I Recently acquired a Playstation 3 and although I don't plan on converting my DVD collection (500 dvds) to Blu Ray or HD-DVD I did purchase Speed on Blu Ray and I can tell you from what I heard, the future of High Definition Audio is here in this Onkyo TX-SR805! Every detail that they mixed into the movie's original track is encoded into DTS HD. It's literally translated from the original format without any loss of quality. It's ridiculous how amazing it sounds.
You may not hear a huge difference, but when movies start being encoded with this HD Audio, eventually you'll go back to an old DVD and cringe at the sound difference (or at least notice the lack of detail in the audio). If you don't have a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player don't fret, there's still a vast array of audio settings between Dolby Digital, and DTS there's also THX Ultra2 certified settings that blow you away! I currently have my DVD player setup to THX Cinema and watching the Pod Race in Star Wars Episode One: Phantom Menace is something you should check out A-M-A-Z-I-N-G.
All the features can be overwhelming and the remote isn't the most intuitive, but when you spend a little time getting used to the buttons you need to push to make things work in harmony, you'll be happy with what you've got. Not to mention the beefy remote that comes with it can learn button functions which I love. For example when I coded in my HD Dishnetwork Box I couldn't get to the On screen TV Guide or my Recorded TV Menu, so I assigned the buttons manually and now the universal remote does everything my Cable DVR Remote does! If only I could code it to my Windows Media Center Remote oh well.
My one and only tiny complaint about this receiver is that it doesn't have HD Radio. It supports XM and Sirius radio but not HD FM Signals (not sure how to explain it but it's CD quality Free Local Radio Stations). The radio itself sounds fine and I don't listen to the radio very often anyways so it's not a big deal to me, but being as future proof as this receiver is, it should have HD radio. (Since I don't have XM, Sirius, or an Ipod I can't comment on the Docking capabilities or the Satellite Radio quality)
Last but not least make sure you have a big heavy duty surge protector, this thing is a power monster, you'll want a surge protector to make sure the receiver is getting a regulated amount of power, when I was setting it up I had all my components on at once and someone decided to turn on the hair dryer and a few fans, and there went the power. So be forewarned if you like 4 components on at once you might blow a fuse. also for $30 a 3 year protection plan is highly recommended just in case something shorts out in the receiver (knock on wood) you can service it for free, and get a replacement if necessary.
These aren't available in the store(ordered mine online at CC) and the sales people don't have much info on the receiver itself since it came out in May(about a month from prior to today) but it's comparable to the TX-SR804 if you want more similar opinions :)

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