Sony BRAVIA DAV-DZ170 Home Theater System..
GET Sony BRAVIA DAV-DZ170 Home Theater System By SonyMost helpful customer reviews
258 of 266 people found the following review helpful.
Nice system, good price, fairly easy set up
By Musicbookfan
Purchased this system for our family room which is a little on the smaller side. The sound is rich and full, the subwoofer is better than expected, and overall we're very pleased. Good TV sound and excellent DVD and iPod sound. Moderately priced as well, which is a bonus. *NOTE: Fiber Optic audio and HDMI video cables are NOT included and must be purchased separately.* The system does include a cable for basic video connection. The Fiber Optic audio cable (recommended for best quality audio) is about $20-25 retail. [If purchasing the fiber optic cable, make sure to remove the small clear covers at each end of the cable before trying to connect it to the receiver and cable box or TV. Otherwise...yikes, you've plugged the jacks]. The remote is small, very handy and easy to use. Front connection for an iPod, which works great. There's an antennae for FM radio which we haven't connected yet so I can't comment on that.
Set up is easy but time consuming, so as with most electronic set ups buyers should allow enough time to run the wires, position the rear speakers, attach everything and run the tests. There's fairly generous amount of speaker wire [wish they could have included about 5' more for the back speakers]; depending on how the room is arranged buyers might need to figure out creative ways to run the speaker wires for the back speakers. If it's impossible to properly place two speakers in the back of the room there is a setting which adjusts the sound for a set up where all speakers are located in the front.
The system comes with a 1-2-3 Step easy set up guide and also the more detailed instruction booklet. Speaker cords, input jacks, and speakers are color coded and clearly labeled. There's a disc included to run as part of setting up the speakers and testing the system. For the most part the instructions are self explanatory and easy to follow. However, some of the steps are slightly more confusing than necessary because the drawings of various components [e.g. TV, Cable Box, Sony Receiver] aren't labeled. The person setting the system up can clearly see what needs to be connected, but it's not always clear to what component [cable box or TV].
We now use this system exclusively and keep the speakers on our TV turned down. We will probably purchase this system for use with our basement TV as well.
UPDATE JANUARY 2014: This system is still working great and delivering excellent sound for our smaller family room. We recently started using Apple TV and playing more movies and music through our TV...the sound quality from this surround sound system is very good particularly for music. Definitely recommend purchasing and using the fiber optic cable to maximize sound quality.
97 of 100 people found the following review helpful.
Excellent basic stereo system for a great price
By Elizabeth
I ordered this home theater system because I was looking for the following:
* A decent set of 5.1 surround-sound speakers to go with my new flat-panel HDTV, since in my experience, flat-panel TVs have less-than-stellar built-in speakers, due to their size
* A DVD player, since the one I had was old and crappy
* A setup that wouldn't break the bank
* A system that wasn't "smart" (i.e. internet-capable with apps for viewing online content), since the TV I ordered has that already
This system met all those requirements, and I'm pretty happy with it.
Pros:
* Setup was easy, to the point where you don't really even need the instructions, since it's so intuitive
* The sound output is great, considering the price point this unit is being sold at. Yes, it's not a super-duper high-quality sound system that will blow away an audiophile, but for under $200 (I paid $179 for it, though I've seen the price fluctuate +/- $20 over time) it's a great system.
* The USB port in the front of the system is really convenient - it allows me to listen to music from my iPhone on the stereo, and it also charges the iPhone when it's plugged in. The remote control also works for the iPhone (play, pause, next, etc.), which is handy.
* The HDMI sync worked flawlessly, so the system turns on automatically when I turn on the TV (and not a Sony BRAVIA TV, for the record - it's an LG HDTV).
* The calibration mic included with the system makes it really easy to automatically calibrate the output of each of the speakers. Manually adjusting each individually after the fact if the auto calibration doesn't suit your needs is pretty easy, too. I live in a second-story apartment and bumped down the setting on the subwoofer to avoid irate downstairs neighbors. Doing so was a cinch.
Cons:
* From the info found online and in the instruction booklet, I was led to believe that this system could receive audio input via HDMI (e.g. a single HDMI cable connecting the DVD player via an ARC HDMI port on the TV would provide DVD video and audio input to the TV, and return audio to the sound system from the TV when watching from some other source, like a cable box or broadcast television). This is not true. I realized after closely scrutinizing the documentation that it never explicitly says this, but it does make it look like this would be possible from the diagrams.
To send audio back to the stereo system, you MUST connect the TV to the DVD player with a digital optical audio TOSLINK cable (for a digital audio connection) or coaxial (for an analog audio connection). Since my TV only supports a digital audio output, I had to use the TOSLINK cable.
* The rear speakers are not wireless. I didn't expect them to be (especially not at the price this unit sells for), and it's not a big deal for me, since I have all my speakers set up in the front of the room, but it might be considered a negative for some people.
* The rear speaker wires are not very long. Again, not a big deal for me, since they're all up front anyway, but if I HAD wanted to put them in the back of the room, I might have had some difficulty. The speakers use a proprietary wire connection, so splicing them to make them longer would have been a little tricky (though I have read reports of people managing it).
* Adjusting the output settings on the individual speakers is easy (as stated in the pros section above), but it does require going into the settings menu, which can only be accessed when the system is NOT playing a DVD. So no adjusting anything but the main volume when you're in the middle of a movie. If you realize that a particular movie is really bass-heavy and you want to adjust the output of the sub, you have to stop the DVD, go into the system settings menu, tweak it, and then restart your DVD. I haven't encountered a time when I've needed to do this, but I can imagine it might irk some people if they had to go through that rigmarole.
None of the "cons" I've listed were deal-breakers for me, since most of them don't apply to my particular setup. But they are worth noting, since they may be deal-breakers for someone else.
Overall, I've been very happy with this system: it's suited my needs perfectly, and the price was excellent.
92 of 96 people found the following review helpful.
Really Nice Setup With Really Nice Price
By C. Perry
Sony's Bravia line has yet to disappoint me. This home theater in a box is a really nice setup. It doesn't have the flexibility of a high-end receiver like a Denon or Onkyo, but that's not really what a home theater in a box setup is supposed to do. It has one HDMI output, but no HDMI inputs, and only one optical input. If you've got a newer model tv, that's all you need most of the time. If you can run all of your HDMI sources into your tv, you can just run the one optical cable to this receiver and you're ready to go. It's plenty powerful for most living rooms and gets loud without losing much resolution. The subwoofer the weakest aspect of this set, but it's not that bad. You can turn it up in the settings if you want a little more bottom end. I take it back, the weakest aspect of this set is the proprietary input system for the speaker wires. Sony isn't the only company to do this, so it's hard to single them out here, but it's still annoying. I prefer to use lower gauge speaker wires, but the proprietary speaker plugs make that almost impossible.
Overall, I prefer this setup to most component systems because A) it doesn't take up much space B) it reproduces sounds evenly and accurately C) the DVD upconversion is pretty good and D) the price is very nice. I down-sized from a 7.1 component setup and don't regret it for a second.
See all 219 customer reviews...More...
