Customer Reviews

Sony STRDG720 7.1 Audio Video Receiver - Black

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(30)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If you own a Blu-ray player and it decodes uncompressed audio like Dolby TruHD and DTS-HD MA. Then now is is time to buy this inexpensive yet very capable receiver. It was huge improvement from my nine year old Sony 5.1 receiver, which still works well.

I wanted to complement my PS3 and 1080p 65" Mitsubishi with clean uncompressed audio. This receiver met this expectation for me and beyond with the incredible sound it can process. After setting it up, I popped in The Simpsons Movie on Blu-ray which has DTS-HD MA. I could not believe my Sony speakers could sound any better until it started playing. I then tried Spiderman 3 with Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and it sounded amazing when Sandman fought Spiderman during the armored car scene. I was truly convinced that I made the right decision buying the 720 after listening to those tests movies.

To every high, there is a low.

The receiver menu took awhile to understand from its manual. I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to adjust my speaker set up settings. After some curse words and taking a break, I finally figured it out. Its still not easy to navigate the menus for minor tweaking to this day after using it for a week! Also I miss the blue light that lets you know when its processing surround sound. It does have a brief scroll telling you what it is processing. But its not the same :(

Bonus!

Harmony does now have the 720 in their database and my 880 remote works great with it.

The 720 is sure a great upgrade for my home theater and I hope it can last just as long as my old one! Be sure to have enough HDMI cables for your home theater set up. I get mine from mycablemart.com and no I dont work for them bcuz I dropped their name. They have 6' 1.3a compliant cables with shipping for under ten bucks!

If you have it set up right, you will not be disappointed with the 720.

I bought this receiver to compliment the following setup.
Sharp 46" 1080P LCD
60GB PS3
Polk RM6750 Surround Speakers plus two Polk bookshelfs(6.1 Surround).

This receiver is a fantastic value! Has all features needed to enter HDTV and Blu-Ray heaven. Don't bother spending big bucks on high end receivers since the PS3 does all the hard work for you. Just run the whole system via HDMI and your get crystal clear sound. It doesn't have a video menu, but you don't need it. Setup is straighforward. Adjustments can be made to ensure perfect sound regardless of room size or shape.

Not sure a 6.1 or 7.1 setup is worth the effort. Just fills the sound stage a little better. PS3 games really sound good through this setup.

Dolby True HD on Spiderman and Dolby 5.1 Uncompressed on National Treasure sound fantastic.

Downside, remote isn't too smart. In the end, get by with Cable TV universal or pony up the big cash for the Logitech Harmony.

I got the receiver a week or so ago and it is great, especially considering the price. It sounds great and most setup is automatic. It works great with PS3/HDMI. HDMI is required for the PS3 to output more than 2 audio channels from a Blu-Ray Disk (Standard DVDs on the PS3 reproduce Dolby 5.1 just fine.)

HOWEVER, beware of COX cable if you want to use HDMI from the cable box. You will get an error on your TV about it not supporting HDCP, which is a copy protection scheme. Cox (Scientific Atlanta) DVR boxes see any HDMI switching receiver as some sort of pirating device and requires you to use component cables. This is a major inconvenience! The result is that you can't switch from the COX box to the PS3 without changing inputs on your TV.

A call to COX customer "care" revealed that they don't care to remove HDCP from their cable boxes even though I suspect it would be a simple ROM upgrade.

I recently bought the Sony STR-DG720 about 1.5 weeks ago, and this receiver does everything it should. No issues thus far, and the receiver works with Harmony 550 remote though the Logitech site does not have the codes for the remote yet so you have to self program the Harmony 550 remote for now to work with the 720.

Setup was pretty easy, and the automatic speaker settings was easy with using the provided Sony MIC.

Sound quality is amazing with watching Digital TV, HDTV and DVDs with enough power to power my BOSE 5.1 Speaker system.

My entire system consists of this, PS3 for BD player, STR-DG720 for my reciever, SAW2500 for subwoofer, SS-B3000 bookshelf speakers, and SS-CR3000 for my center and rear channels. I'm going to have to buy the SS-B1000's for my surround channels. I am very impressed with this receiver. I just watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind in DTS-HD MA audio (PS3 decodes it internally sending the signal in LCPM to the receiver). The sound is absolutly clear and amazing, it made a huge difference. On my old receiver, I would have to crank up the sound to around 50 for movies and 35-40 for music. Now for a movie all I have to do is turn it to around 33-35 and I am flooded in an ocean of sound. I have a Zune connected into the system as well, it makes my music more alive. This receiver has everything that I could want and more. If you have a player that can internally decode HD codecs (Dolby TruHD and DTS-HD MA) like the PS3 and you want to save a couple hundred dollars, this is the system like you. Sony has stepped up their quality in home audio greatly.

You wont get full HDMI (video AND audio) routing, and 7.1, anywhere else near this price range. Plenty of features here...

Dont listen to people nay saying the audio quality. They are either pros or they have buyers remorse that they payed more. I have had both Onkyo and Yahmaha receivers in the past, and I can say that unless you are a TRUE audiophile, you will be very happy with this receiver. It sounds great paired up with some quality speakers.

If you have: a 42" 1080P tv, a decent speaker set up, an xbox/blu ray player or ps3...just save your money and dont look back. You will be happy.

As being one that was looking for a receiver that would give me the HDMI sound it is hard to find a spec on a system that will tell you if it does or not. Well look no further. This system WILL play the lossless audio via HDMI. Now you must know that this reciever DOES NOT decode the HIDEF audio such as True HD or PCM. I have mine hooked up to the PS3 witch DOES the encoding of all HIDEF audio. If you dont have a blu-ray player or DVD player that does not decode the HIDEF audio and thats what you want then this is not the receiver for you. But if you have it then this is a great deal. I bought the 5.1 Yamaha speakers and it is absolutely great. If you do have the PS3 i had to change audio on the PS3 to Linear PCM in the sound settings. You have to do this so that the player decodes the audio and not the receiver. I watched Twister on Blu-Ray and it BLEW my mind on what you miss with just dolby 5.1. This is a great entry level system with great sound like the big boys."

I've had this receiver as part of my home theater for 6 months and it's worked flawlessly; excellent picture and sound. I'm not a HT expert by any means but I did a lot of research before buying my components. My TV is a Samsung 52" LN52A550, and I have a Motorola DCT6412 cable box and PS3 connected, everything with HDMI. I was interested in getting a receiver where the HDMI inputs/outputs would handle both sound and picture, since I'd read that on some receivers the HDMI doesn't handle sound. I have Polk Audio Monitor 60s, a Polk Audio CS1 center speaker, and a Polk Audio PSW10 subwoofer, which I mostly only power on when I watch movies. I bought some back speakers but have never hooked them up, mainly because I'm very happy with the sound as is, plus I'd have to run wires all around my living room. Anyway, with this receiver you can run your system as 2 channel, front plus center, 5 channel, or 7. It comes with a microphone gizmo where you can have the system calibrate/balance your speakers for you, but I haven't found that necessary. There are also many, many listening settings and adjustments you can make and options you can choose, but I've so far mostly gone with the defaults. The one thing I don't like about this receiver is that apparently you have to do either HDMI or component connections and you can't switch - i.e., you can't use the optical output for other components not connected through HDMI if you're using HDMI connections. Although I gather that there are switching devices you can buy and that some higher end receivers will do switching. But for my needs and the money I had to spend, I'm very happy. If you're considering buying this, I recommend downloading the user manual from Sony and glancing through it if you have specific questions.

The audio codecs are ahead of the mainstream technology that is out there. Blu-Ray will eventually take advantage of all of this tech, but having this piece of equipment gives you a head start and will not become obsolete anytime soon. Sure, you can probably find "better" sounding equipment, or some think just because they paid a lot more, but I have had the same Sony DD/DTS 5.1 receiver for 8 years before I purchased this receiver. I am completely pleased with this product and Sony has always produced great electronics. I see no reason spending $500 or more for something that his Sony can do for much less.

There are many good and bad things about this receiver. I've had it about a month now with no major problems. I would like to start by saying that the people who said there is no A+B are pretty stupid. You can't make it come out both by click either A or B, you need to set a soundfield for it to come out both. I have it hooked up as 5.1, 2 speakers in A and 3 in B, which is recommended. Make sure you set all the speaker sizes to small, even if the front are large. This will make the sound richer by having the deep sounds come out of the sub.

Ok so lets start with the good. It has 3, yes 3 HDMI inputs that do carry sound, unlike the competition in this price range like Onkyo, which i have for my other setup. It also has many other inputs, too many to count which i don't use, except 1 video input for sound from my laptop. It also has many soundfields to choose from that will let you experience different sounds for your specific application (e.g. music, movie, video game).

Now for the bad. My biggest problem is with the remote. You need to point the remote directly at the receiver for it detect it. This might not sound like a big deal, but it gets really annoying when you have something on the coffee table that blocks its line of sight, or you just don't feel like taking your hand out from under the blanket. Another problem is i couldn't program it to my cable remote from comcast. I bought myself a logitech harmony remote for Christmas, so hopefully that will fix the problem. Even though they are not on the same remote, every time i turn off my tv, it auto turns off the receiver for some reason, which could be perceived as good or bad. Sometimes i would like to listen to music from the tv, without it actually being on and wasting energy, so i always need to turn the receiver back on after i turn off the tv. Also, every time i turn on the receiver, it goes to the TV input for some reason, even though my cable box is plugged into SAT. For some reason, the TV input puts out the picture but no sound. Also the menu is pretty bad, and the display isn't the best, but i'm not to stuck up on that. One last thing to mention is this does not stay at a steady 105 watts per channel. It fluctuates a lot, so you will be just as good going with an 80 watts per channel receiver as this. I don't mind, but you might.

Now that i'm looking at all the bad written down, it makes me want to lower it to 3 stars, but i will leave it at 4 because it serves its purpose well. I will also say, i did hear a large improvement over my old receiver, with much higher highs, and lower lows, as well as almost no background static. Over all i would recommend that if you're on a budget to buy this. If you have money to spare, i would buy a better receiver from Denon.