SONY DAV-FR1 DVD Dream(TM) Audio System

Rating:
Summary: Good Purchase
Review: I bought this DVD Dream System at Best Buy for Christmas. On the 25th, I removed the DVD/VCR combo and set up the Dream System in our living room, took me an hour to set up. After I set up and tested some DVDs and CDs, it worked great. I also tested some JPEG photo CDs and MP3 format CDs, it worked great, too. I liked the way that displays song title when I play MP3 format CDs. The sound quality is also very good, but here are some disadvantages:

- Takes a while to load discs
- Interrupt playing the current disc if you change the other 4 discs
- Cannot use 8cm discs, because it's slot type

Rating:
Summary: Make your dream come true!
Review: I don't why the previous reviewer gave this wonderful piece of sound engineering such a poor rating. I gifted this system to myself in Christmas, after lot of deliberation between this system, Sony DAV-BC150 and Panasonic HT-720. And I am eternally glad that I finally choose this system. DAV-FR1 is everything you can expect, and then some more. Let me jot them in a organized fashion before I get too carried away:

1. Quality: I am quite finicky about sound quality, and yet I have heard nothing like this baby. With good quality source material, DAV-FR1 can rival sound systems in theaters - seriously. Movies look wonderful with progressive scan/component video output.
2. Power: 750 W total power, S-Master digital amplifier, twin-driver subwoofer...need I say more? I can't use even the 20% of the total power.
3. Convenience: Can play DVDs(both +/- formats), CD (-R/-RW, even multisession), MP3 CDs (including ID3 tags), JPEG CDs (including EXIF data) - and other exotic formats like VCD and SACD. The software interface is not just good, it's well-thought and well-designed. 5 disk slot loading changer means you'll never get hit by faulty eject mechanisms any more. Speakers/connectors/receiver is color-matched for easy hookups.
4. Compatibility: Supports almost all the Dolby/DTS matrix and surround decoding formats.
5. Expansion option: For those of you who'd like to upgrade to 6.1 from 5.1 in the future - this receiver outputs a surround back channel, and supports 6.1 decoding options (Dolby Digital EX, DTS ES).
6. Looks: If you've ever drooled over a Apple PowerBook, you know what I'm referring to. DAV-FR1 is drop-dead sleek and gorgeous, with solid build quality and brushed-metal look. In reality it looks much better than the paltry picture Amazon provides. The back-lit silver remote perfectly complements the system. Bye bye, black ugly receivers.

Final thoughts: If you're shopping for a home theater this festive season, and intelligent enough to reject over-priced (and over-hyped) Bose, your search is over! You can't go wrong with DAV-FR1, or it's big sister DAV-FR9. And no, I don't work for Sony ;-), am just a overly satisfied customer.

Rating:
Summary: Nightmare system
Review: I started with a DAV-FC1, it would freeze up if you paused a disc for along period of time (pause, go to work, come home). Went round and round with Sony's horrible support, they eventually send me a DAV-FR1. Guess what, the same freeze happens. And when it freezes you have to unplug it from the wall, and leave it unplugged for a while before starting over again. The unit basically works, but if you are annoyed by a consumer product that can be made to freeze, this is not for you. I'm refusing yet another replacment and demanding my money back.

Also, Sony DVD players in general (and this one specifically) deliver terrible image quality -- they have the "Chroma bug", consequently many movies look awful, especially highly saturated colors like Pixar movies. Go to google, type "DVD chroma bug" and click on the hometheaterhifi.com link, the chroma bug is explained in detail there (with pictures), an interesting read if you care about this kind of thing. This is not gear-head nit-picking, many movies look just terrible -- little checkerboard patterns all over highly saturated orange Nemo. Blech - it just ruins the movie for me. (You can also google "DVD chroma bug Sony" and see that many Sony players still have this bug. The whole "Dream System" series has this bug.) At WalMart you can buy $80 DVD players that took the time to fix this bug.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome Sound Right Out of the Box!
Review: I was pretty skeptical about a home-theater-in-a-box until I got this new Sony system home and tried it out. I already had a really good component-based home theater, but this system was a promotional purchase along with my new Sony HDTV, and the price was too good to pass up. Set-up took about 45 minutes, but the resulting sound is awesome! The bass is wonderful - when the Norah Jones CD is playing, my living room sounds like a jazz club!

I had recently purchased the Sony NS-575P single-disc DVD player and was stunned by its video performance and slick operation. It looks as though the changer in the FR1 uses similar software, or atleast, the same user interface and it is great! I like how it displays the disc's artwork as a screen background. The reasons why I'm happy with this Sony changer are similar to why I am also so happy with the stand-alone player I had to move to the den - it decodes virtually EVERYTHING you can throw at it... mp3, SACD (!), and DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD with JPEGS, etc.

And, the all-in-one package means a minimum of wires. Quite frankly, I'm really impressed with this "dream system"... it delivers big sound and convenience for much less money than I expected to have to pay! Thanks, Sony!

Update: Just listened to/watched the Star Wars trilogy on DVD and the sound (and video) is very impressive. In particular, the dialogue was always audible, even when the music and other sound effects were active.

Also: There is one thing that bugs me about this player - this is my first carousel CD or DVD changer (I've had a magazine changer forever), so I don't know if this is par for the course or not, but it takes a fairly long amount of time to load a disc into an empty slot... you can hear lots of stuff going on inside the box, but it's never clear WHEN it's OK to go ahead and load the disc. But maybe this is true of all carousel-style changers.

Just FYI: No color/saturation problems can be detected with my system. I use component video outputs with an HDTV widescreen monitor (see my other reviews) and I stand by the stunning images I see - my DVD collection, as I stated above, is BRAND NEW again!

Rating:
Summary: Great buy and quality
Review: Picked this unit up for 399.00 right here on Maui, took it home and the Kid and I hooked it up that night. A quantum leap for audio in this household, replacing a stereo, Remember those? Anyway the unit sounds great and has features that bring us forward in time. I'll be picking up a couple of SACD disks soon. Only negative so far; the unit does not operate when changing disks and it takes some time to do so, but not to worry, it operates very well when goin'. Hopefully, it will fulfill our needs for years to come!

Rating:
Summary: Great sound and picture ... but a bit quirky
Review: The design is ultra sleek & contemporary and the sound and picture are indeed remarkable for a home theater in a box system. I love playing home made picture discs like a slide show. This system makes that very easy to do.

As stated by the previous reviewers, there are a few little glitches in this system that need to be resolved before my rating for this system increase to 5 stars.

* The carousel does take a bit too long to load. It's not very long, but longer than other systems, and long enough to be noticable and slightly annoying.

* I'm not a tekkie but the system that reads the discs has occasional trouble reading home burned CDs when the same CDs play fine on other older and lower end players. I thought it may have been a defect in my unit, however a replacement unit responds the same way.

* While a disc is playing, you cannot change, insert or eject a disc without interrupting the one currently playing.

By themselves, these small factors may not be a big deal for most consumers and certainly don't detract from the quality of the sound or the picture once a disc is playing.

If you are more performance oriented, the combined problematic issues make a great video and audio system seem only adequate.