The Official VSX-816-K/S Owner's Thread

[Mitsu52Guy]

I didn't see one so I thought I'd start one. I just pick this unit up today. I got it from a local B&M on a price match for 239 (MSRP is 299). The ratings I found scattered on the web were pretty good for a cheaper receiver. I upgraded from a Sony DB-830 that I had for about 8 years. My initial thoughts are that it works well if you don't need HDMI inputs or switching. The sound is good, and the display is easy to read and understand. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it yet. So a more detailed review will come later.

One really positive thing I saw was that when DVR is the selected input, the remote worked with my HR10-250 out of the box. That shocked me. Almost all the daily functional buttons worked. I can do everything from pause to use the GUI. About the only thing I can find so far is the replay and the 30 sec skip.

I also liked the Multi-Channel Acoustic Calibration Circuit (MCACC). That's a really nice feature in a mid-line receiver. It worked well too.

The unit gets a thumbs up from me initially. The manual and 1 year warranty get a thumbs down.

[qlu_one]

I got mine very recently and am still exploring it.

The first unit I received from Amazon was defective. Central speaker channel was breaking up. Amazon promptly shipped me another one. The 2nd seemed to be OK so far.

One curious thing. Pioneer seems to be following a recent trend and in the manual is calling a power button a standby button. That has some rationale - you plug in the power cord and an LED light comes on telling you the receiver is plugged in. Then you press power button, pardon standby button and the LED goes out but all the other lights are on, and you know the receiver is ON. That's how my 1st unit behaved. My present unit is different. I plug in the cord and nothing happens. I push the "standby" button and the LED in the button light ups as well as the rest. The LED on my present unit is blue, in the first unit it was red. This is not a big deal but now I see little sense calling power button anything else but power button. Also, I haven't check my 1st unit but I would expect that if a receiver is on and you unplug it and then plug back in then it is coming in into a standby mode. Mine coming straight back ON. So what kind of a standby it is? I wonder if this is a by-design-feature difference between the two slightly different models or mine is faulty.