I was hesitant to buy a "refurb", but glad I did...it's well worth the savings in that I can't tell it from brand new!
It was purchased as a Christmas present for my girlfriends condo and it fills the room with incredible sound quality. It's truly "plug 'n play"...the connections are color coded and "snap in" for a no-brainer install. The "auto speaker calibration" using the included "mic" was a breeze and the results are startling...it fits the sound to your environment in about (30) seconds! It's very impressive!
The only negative I can come up with is the set-up instructions don't address the fact that you might want to install other periphials...in my case, a cable box and another DVD/USB player to take advantage of Divx in playing my own DVDs and downloaded movies stored on a "flash" drive...they won't play on the Sony because of codec issues, but play just fine on a Samsung and numerous other DVD/USB players.
I overcame this by running three separate HDMI cables from (1), the cable box direct to the TV, (2), the Samsung DVD/USB player direct to the TV and (3), the Sony, again to the TV. Then to get cable box audio signal and Samsung DVD/USB player audio "back" to the Sony for total system surround sound, I used the "optical out" port on my TV, (and I've checked, there is an "audio optical out" on all new TVs, to run an optical cable back to the "optical in" on the Sony...so whether I'm watching TV through the cable box or a movie of my creation on the Samsung DVD/USB player, I still get audio from both through the surround system and can fine tune the sound with the Sony remote...it may sound complicated, but it's not...I figured it out after reading set-up instructions for a Yamaha system that I have at my house...it worked just as I described above and that was straight from the Yamaha set-up guide!
You can't go wrong with this system...I paid more than twice this amount for the Yamaha, and it's a great system, but the Sony is right there with it in all regards.
You can "feel" the sound vibrate through your body watching an action adventure movie and "float" on every note listening to classical music or "bang" your head to hard rock! It's all crystal clear!
If you're concerned about any issues with a refurb, don't be, and the sound speaks for itself.
Give it a go, you won't be sorry!
It was purchased as a Christmas present for my girlfriends condo and it fills the room with incredible sound quality. It's truly "plug 'n play"...the connections are color coded and "snap in" for a no-brainer install. The "auto speaker calibration" using the included "mic" was a breeze and the results are startling...it fits the sound to your environment in about (30) seconds! It's very impressive!
The only negative I can come up with is the set-up instructions don't address the fact that you might want to install other periphials...in my case, a cable box and another DVD/USB player to take advantage of Divx in playing my own DVDs and downloaded movies stored on a "flash" drive...they won't play on the Sony because of codec issues, but play just fine on a Samsung and numerous other DVD/USB players.
I overcame this by running three separate HDMI cables from (1), the cable box direct to the TV, (2), the Samsung DVD/USB player direct to the TV and (3), the Sony, again to the TV. Then to get cable box audio signal and Samsung DVD/USB player audio "back" to the Sony for total system surround sound, I used the "optical out" port on my TV, (and I've checked, there is an "audio optical out" on all new TVs, to run an optical cable back to the "optical in" on the Sony...so whether I'm watching TV through the cable box or a movie of my creation on the Samsung DVD/USB player, I still get audio from both through the surround system and can fine tune the sound with the Sony remote...it may sound complicated, but it's not...I figured it out after reading set-up instructions for a Yamaha system that I have at my house...it worked just as I described above and that was straight from the Yamaha set-up guide!
You can't go wrong with this system...I paid more than twice this amount for the Yamaha, and it's a great system, but the Sony is right there with it in all regards.
You can "feel" the sound vibrate through your body watching an action adventure movie and "float" on every note listening to classical music or "bang" your head to hard rock! It's all crystal clear!
If you're concerned about any issues with a refurb, don't be, and the sound speaks for itself.
Give it a go, you won't be sorry!
