Pioneer VSX-818V 5.1-Channel AV Receiver

I like this product! I have a 50 inch Maxent HD monitor that I got for a great price, but it has lousy sound. I used to play my movies sound through the auxillary input on my Zenith home theater in a box, but it died. I picked up this unit at Best Buy and brought it home. Of course, my old 15watt speakers wouldn't do, but I got a great deal on a closeout of Yamaha 100 watt speakers with active subwoofer for 120 bucks. I love the fact you have so many sound options, and can plug in your Ipod and control it using the Pioneer's remote. By the way, I plugged in my Ipod with only one bar showing on the battery meter, played it for about 90 minutes, and when I took it off, it was fully charged. Nice feature.
There's only 2 minor things I don't like. One is the pass thru HDMI doesn't include audio, so you'll need either a Digital coax or Optical cable. The other thing is I found the instruction book a bit confusing, and one of my colleagues at work had to walk me through the setup. Then again, I'm certainly no genius when it comes to that. All that being said, I do like the receiver. It seems to be excellent quality.

This receiver is built for home theater setups with 5 channel inputs, but has a large set of inputs useful for traditional stereo hookups. It has a useful imaging setup to define parameters for your listening space. It looks and sounds good, with a very complicated remote control that does most everything. I can easily hook up an mp3 player or other external input to the front panel. Where it falls short: It has no provision for a tape monitor loop, which means my external graphic analyzer is useless for adjusting the sound of inputs selected at the receiver. It is difficult to adjust the bass and treble at the receiver, too, and there is not enough range in the adjustment.

I'm no audiophile but this is an excellent reciever for the price. It comes with a microphone that you place in the "sweet spot" of your room and the system will send audio signals to it and auto calibrate the system. I am also happy to report the iPod function worked excellent with my iPhone and 5g iPod. Highly recomend!!

I really love this receiver; my father originally had a Pioneer from the 1970s he bought for 400 dollars. It had the turntable, receiver, speakers and tape deck. Its still preforming great. This convinced me to buy a Pioneer. Another reason, they are one of the only manufactures that are out there who actually outputs 120 watts per channel. When powering a Bose Acoustimas system the speakers can take 150 watts per channel. This receiver also has my favorite feature; an iPod input via USB in the front which allows you to pretty much control your iPod entirely with the remote which will display on your TV as well as the small pannel on the receiver. The only way to get true 5.1 channel audio out of this baby though is Optical Audio; which it has two inputs. One for my TV and one for PS3; I honestly think thats all I really need too. Great purchase! Only wish it had HDMI audio pass through as well as the video it has. Fantastic beginners audio receiver. Make sure your speakers are at least 120 watts per channel though; its one powerful receiver. PS If you want the audio pass through you'll have to go the 918 not the 518 or 818, I would have but I dont want to pay over 250 dollars for my first receiver.

This is an excellent receiver for the price. Takes some time to adjust settings to get the exact desirable sound, but well worth the education.