Sony STRDG920 7.1-Channel Audio/Video Receiver

Worked as Expected. Easy to set-up with GUI. Up-Conversion from lesser resolution sources such as TV / Game Consoles / DVD looks excellent in 1080 resolution (nearly equal to Blue-Ray).

Overall, it's a pretty good receiver. But the IR sensor is very weak. You must point directly at the receiver. Pointing the remote just a bit to the side of the receiver does nothing. I have several components on the same rack and they all get the IR signal except the Sony receiver.

It sounds small, but I'm regretting my purchase because of this. I have a Logitech Harmony One remote that constantly fails because all components get the signal except the receiver.

Good build. Does exactly what it says. Good analog to digital conversion with the exception of my XBOX 360. There is a faint green line at the top of the screen and thats probably because of the conversion from component to HDMI and scaling of resolutions. I always leave my HDTV with NO OVERSCAN so if it bothered me that bad I could set the aspect ratio to overscan a little. Again not a big deal to me. Not a perfect receiver, but for the price point I have really no complaints. Unless you just want to go with the ES line of receivers this should fit most peoples needs.

Installed as 5.1 with big front speakers and small rear. The digital circuitry does not work well with this setup - only allows setting all speakers "Small" or "Large". Suggests using "Small" but seems then to cut off all low freq. from the front speakers and only using the subwoofer for lows and the sound is then unnatural. For listening music I need to manually change also the speaker DSP setup.
Additionally after a week or so, the HDMI circuitry broke and I had to ship the amp back to Sony return center, as the dealer refused the return since I had not the saved the original packaging. Sounds thick, right?
Luckily Sony customer support was helpful and I was able to return the product to a local Sony store. However, estimated time to get it back is 20 business days -- a month that is.

Two stars: this expensive box must be able to work perfectly and automatically with any speaker combination and destroying original shipping cartons should not void the amazon return policy on defect items. Would be one but Sony customer support deserves the other one -- assuming I'll get the product back fully functional

Pros
- Solid, heavy construction.
- Simple, clean front panel, very readable display.
- On screen GUI interface offers fine-grained control of settings
- Switches between 4 HDMI inputs.
- Input source upconversion up to 1080p
- Automated speaker calibration with supplied microphone
- Decodes most audio formats
- Excellent sound quality, plenty of power.

Cons
- Instruction manual is very poorly organized, much as if a list of all the chips on a your computer's circuit board would somehow tell you how to use the computer. Index is a joke. Manual appears to have been translated by a non-native English speaker.
- Bazillion button remote control not designed for convenience or ease of use.
- Second HDMI output would have been nice (but good luck finding that anywhere...).

Bottom line
- 1080p upconversion, GUI interface and 4th HDMI input makes the STR-DG920 well worth the premium over the STR-DG820.
- But why oh why doesn't Sony (and not just them) take a lesson from Apple for instruction manuals and TiVo for remote control design?
- Outstanding feature set and price/performance ratio make this a winner in the mid-price A/V receiver market as of 8/2008.