Now that the Writer's strike is over, we can finally start to get our favorite shows back. We'll talk about when you can expect to see new episodes of the great HDTV you've been missing for the last few months. You can read all about it at TV Guide. We've also got a review of the Pioneer VSX-94TXH 7.1 A/V Receiver.
Last
month Ara picked up an AppleTV for use in his media room. That became
the fourth HDMI device which was one device too many for his Yamaha
RX-V2700 receiver. So he contacted Pioneer to see if he could review
the Pioneer VSX-94TXH 7.1 A/V Receiver. In actuality, Ara was
auditioning the receiver for his own personal use. Within a few days
the receiver showed up and its not going back! Just so everyone is
clear, Ara has to pay for the receiver to keep it.
Features:
HDMI® 1.3a (4 inputs/1 output)
dtsHD® & Dolby® TrueHD Decoders
DLNA® Compliant Network Music and Internet Radio via I/P
Faroudja® DCDi Video Scaler
Advanced MCACC precision environment tuning - The auto calibration is the best that we have come across. We did not need to adjust any of the settings once it was done.
The
VSX-94TXH is a beautiful machine albeit substantial in size and weight.
The receiver weighs 41.4 lbs (18.7Kgs) and measures 16 9/16" (42 cm)
x 7 3/8" (18.7 cm) x 18 1/16" (45.9 cm) (WxHxD). It has a nice piano
black finish that looks great but you definitely can see finger prints.
But who actually touches their equipment? The size and weight are
definitely put to use producing 140 watts of power per each of its
seven channels.
As
an aside, when reading the product specs I ran across a term
called Symmetrical Power Train Design. I couldn't find any
documentation on what it was. But since it was in the product
specification it must be important right? For nothing more than
clarification we asked Pioneer what this was, this is their
explanation. The Pioneer Elite A/V receivers each feature power amps
for seven channels. Accurate multi-channel sound reproduction is
possible only when the operating environment of one channel is
physically identical to that of the others. Therefore, with the new
Pioneer Elite receivers, power output devices for the left channels
(front, surround and surround back) are mounted on the heat sinks
symmetrically with respect to the right channels.
Setup:
Setup
was as straight forward as it can be when introducing a new receiver
into your system. Connections were simple since most of the gear being
used supported HDMI. HDMI does make life easy in cable management and
universal remote programming. The only complication was using an HDMI
to DVI cable between the Mac Mini and the receiver. Since the DVI cable
does not carry audio, the optical output of the Mini was connected to
the DVD input of the receiver. We then had to tell the 94TXH to use one
of the HDMI inputs for the video. In general we like the flexibility
the receiver has in assigning inputs and outputs.
After
everything was routed we ran the Pioneer auto calibration to tune the
room. Auto calibration is something most manufacturers are putting into
their systems to get the best sound out of their equipment. Most mid
range and up receivers have some form of auto calibration. To start the
process you connect an included microphone to an input on the front of
the receiver and place it in the area you want the sound optimized for.
The receiver will output a series of tones and measure the response at
the microphone to find the optimal settings for your room.
On
some receivers we've felt compelled to go in and manually tweak the
final results. Not so with the Pioneer, the system accurately
determined the size and distance of the speakers and was able to set
the gains to the proper levels. Another feature we liked was the
ability to have multiple calibration profiles. Say you play your video
games while sitting on the floor. You can place the microphone in that
area, run the calibration and store it off in one of the receiver
memory positions. If your family doesn't care so much about perfect
sound you can store multiple profiles (6) for different seats in your
house and use the one that is optimized for the seat you are sitting
in!
Sound:
We listened to the typical suite of
material, compressed mp3s, music CDs, Dolby Pro Logic, Dolby Digital,
and Dolby True HD. All sounded fantastic. Dialog was crisp and clear,
effects were dramatic, and the LFE could shake you to the bone. Music
CDs sounded great! We need to to listen to more music on CDs or at
least high bit rate rips of CDs. Also, please consider that much of our
listening tests are a reflection on the speakers that we use. A high
quality receiver like this needs to be paired with high quality
speakers to get the most out of it.
One
feature that we found interesting is something called "Sound
Retriever". This technology is supposed to bring back some of the high
frequency sound that is lost with compressed audio. We did notice an
improvement with this feature enabled but to tell you the truth, buy
high bit rate music or rip them with at a minimum of 256Kbps (lossless
is even better). Then you won't need technology like this and your
audio will sound like it was meant to be.
Although
there is no sound quality difference between having Dolby True HD or
DTS Master Audio decoded on a receiver it was still nice to see "True
HD" or "DTS Master Audio" light up in the receiver's display. However,
with my Blu Ray Player, the only way to hear DTS Master Audio is to
have the receiver decode it. The receiver definitely has the power to
drive a 7.1 system and fill a large room with sound!
Video:
Nowadays,
receivers are also about video. The 94TXH has a Faroudja video scaler
built into it and it will perform video switching for you. The issue we
had with it was that receiver would not upconvert 1080i or 720p source
material to 1080p. Nor would it upconvert a signal coming in over the
HDMI inputs. For Ara's use scaling is adds zero value. It would have
been nice to route the Xbox 360 through the receiver to have one cable
going to the TV.
As
far as switching goes, the player passed the signal through to the TV
unaltered. We did not experience any HDCP issues with any of our
equipment. Having four inputs makes programming the Harmony Remote a
snap. I did not need to do any tweaking to get the activities to work
the way I wanted.
Odds and Ends:
The
94TXH has some extras the don't cost extra. It comes complete with an
iPod cable which allows you to listen and watch your content on your TV
through the receiver. We didn't spend too much time with this because
we had a Mac Mini connected to the receiver. There is an Ethernet
connection which allows for Internet radio and streaming music via and
DLNA server. We couldn't find a way to do an update to the firmware via
the network connection nor could we find a way access the settings via
a web based interface. And that would be nice considering the on screen
GUI looks like something that was considered good in 1985. The remote
is jam packed with buttons that you may never use so your Harmony
remote is almost required.
Conclusion:
Overall,
Ara liked the receiver enough to bump his current receiver to the
family room. Sound is very good, build quality is first rate and you
get an ipod connection cable included in the deal. Four HDMI inputs
makes the 94TXH a very capable HDMI switch! We were a bit disappointed
that the receiver would not scale a 1080i or 720p signal to 1080p and
that we couldn't find a way to get our 480i signal via HDMI to scale to
1080p. The remote and on screen user interface was not worthy of an
otherwise stellar product.
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