Pioneer Elite VSX-03TXH 7.1-Channel A/V Receiver

by Pioneer

Product Details

• Item Weight: 37 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 38 pounds
• ASIN: B001DEYVSE
• Item model number: VSX03TXH
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #81,076 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

Product Description

Awaken your senses to technical innovation designed to command the HD living room. The Pioneer® Elite® VSX-03TXH is the home theater centerpiece for state-of-the art A/V processing for your 1080p flat-panel display and the latest HD audio formats available with Blu-ray Disc® movies. Brace yourself for sound that pours straight into your heart with such clarity, purity and unimaginable beauty, the best seat in the house really is in your living room. Built to an exacting standard for high performance, the robust chassis with rigid trans-stabilizer construction and sleek aluminum front panel houses the Direct Energy Amplifier that drives 110 Watts of pure power across 7 channels. Supported by Pioneer's legacy sound-tuning technology, the VSX-03TXH is loaded with the most modern technology and exclusive advancements available today, including cutting-edge HDMI® jitter reduction to ensure pristine sound and video quality. Add to that Pioneer's exclusive MCACC room calibration and Phase Control technology to ensure the audio arrives at your listening position in complete synchronization, and it's quickly apparent why this stunning machine is worthy of being a part of the Elite Receiver line. Prepare for a whole new level of surround sound. Together with our proprietary sound tuning and digital signal processing (DSP) technologies, the VSX-03TXH delivers the full impact of new audio formats, Dolby® TrueHD, Dolby® Digital Plus and DTS-HD Master Audio High Resolution soundtracks, ensuring precise sonic reproduction that redefines the traditional limitations of home theater audio.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great receiver..., December 20, 2009

By 

B. Smith "Cybercowboy" (Joplin, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Pioneer Elite VSX-03TXH 7.1-Channel A/V Receiver (Electronics)

My father tasked me with specing out his home entertainment system. I just got back from installing this receiver with the following components:

Samsung 67" DLP TV
PlayStation 3 (BluRay player)
Wii
DirecTV HD-DVR
SVS subwoofer/speakers (5.1)
This receiver (purchased new from Amazon)

First of all allow me to correct a previous review that stated that the subwoofer will only turn on for BluRay. That is not correct. It will turn on for any digital source that is X.1. For instance, I set the DirecTV DVR to output Dolbey digital and it happily powered up the subwoofer. It won't turn on for analog sources, at least not that I can figure out, but it didn't matter for our uses.

The setup using the included microphone was very simple, anybody can do it. The input renaming is simple also, considering how flexible it can be. The remote isn't that confusing really, it just takes a bit of study and it makes sense. Reading the manual really actually helps here. The "BD" button stands for "BluRay Disk" and is the industry standard abbreviation for BluRay, so I'm not sure why that confused one of the reviewers.

If most or all of your devices are HDMI, you're in for a treat because it couldn't be easier. The only non-HDMI device I connected was the Wii, using component video and analog stereo audio connections. I chose the "DVD" input for that, renamed it to "Wii", and it outputs to the TV over the single HDMI output cable. Incidentally, that's the only cable running to the TV. That's it! I plugged the PlayStation into the sort-of dedicated BluRay HDMI input (directly below the output HDMI connection), and the DVR to "Assignable HDMI 1", leaving one more HDMI connection for future use. The HDMI switching is seamless and smooth. It takes about 3 seconds to switch between DVR/BluRay/Wii. The DirecTV remote easily programmed the receiver for volume/power (the first code on the programming screen for Panasonic worked!), so my father won't have to use the receiver's remote unless he want's to do something more esoteric.

There are a ton of audio modes to choose from, and you can really go to town customizing this receiver. But with just a quick auto-learn session, we got great sound and were very pleased. We watched two BluRay movies, 'Star Trek' and 'Angels and Demons' and were blown away by the great sound.

What was equally impressive is that I ordered everything on December 14th (Monday afternoon) and it was at my father's house on Thursday, even the SVS speakers (purachased separately from SVS directly from their website). It was the SVS-01(M) speaker package with cylindrical subwoofer. Unfortunately, although I orded the cylindrical one, SVS shipped the box-shaped version. Oh well, Dad liked it OK and it was the same price so we just kept it. This has nothing to do with Amazon, they came through like champs as always.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Typical Pioneer, July 11, 2009

By 

C. Phillips - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Pioneer Elite VSX-03TXH 7.1-Channel A/V Receiver (Electronics)

This receiver is absolutely wonderful. I am a bit of an audiophile and I needed a 2nd receiver for a new setup. I compared this side by side with a few offerings from Denon, Marantz, Onkyo, and Yamaha. While all sounded quite good, the pioneer matched best with my NHT speakers. The signal is clean and it generates plenty of power. It will get plenty loud before you hear any noise, especially if you are using speakers with a 90+ efficiency. The digital signals all worked well with no fuss, including the HD audio from my bluray player. The remote works OK, although the menu set up isnt the greatest. I take audio quality over this though any day, and this Pioneer delivers that well.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Poor Reliability, November 15, 2010

By 

Michael J. Grady - See all my reviews

This review is from: Pioneer Elite VSX-03TXH 7.1-Channel A/V Receiver (Electronics)

I bought one of these (VSX-03TXH) in August 2008. In June 2009, it failed. (Unit "shuts down" - possibly due to some faulty power or temp sensor.) I took it to an authorized repair place, and it took them FOREVER (10-12 weeks) to repair the unit. They replaced "the main assembly", which I took to mean the main PCB.

OK, I can forgive one failure, and now it is fixed.

Except, now one more year has passed, and the unit is DOING THE SAME THING again.

Now it is out of warranty, and Pioneer accepts no responsibility for this.

I'm not buying Pioneer again, and I would suggest other not do so either.

BTW, I also have a Pioneer Blu-Ray player (BDP-51FD) which I also don't much care for. It takes a long time to start up, and I've upgraded FW many times to correct various problems.