Onkyo BR-925 Reviews

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I am considering buying the Onkyo BR-925 as I want a system with a DAB radio plus 80GB hard drive. There does not appear to be many reviews of the system however. Can anyone share good or bad experiences with this or alternative similar spec systems?

 

[Clare Newsome]

Just don't buy the Sony Gigajuke - it's a real letdown.

The Philips Streamium systems have been a mixed bag, too.

Shame we haven't had the Onkyo yet - their micro systems have been excellent, so i'd have high hopes for it.

 

[Anonymous]

I have recently bought one of these. The first one to arrive had a
fault and produced no sound from the DAB radio even though it had a full signal
and the station name and program info could be seen. Findings so far in
no particular order:

[*]FM reception is not
good. I had a cheapish FM tuner attached to a roof aerial that got
FM stereo fine but the Onkyo is very hissy on FM stereo although mono is
fine and the RDS works OK.
[*]I had pre-wired a cable
into my network so connecting up the Onkyo to the network worked first
time. Strangely the MAC address of the unit does not appear in my
router's list of attached devices. It picked up an IP address OK via
DHCP. I manually entered its MAC address into the router and set a
different IP address and this was picked up OK.
[*]The FTP server is not quite
what I expected. I though it might be 'on' all the time but it
isn't. You need to specifically enable it in the menu and you can
only use FTP whilst the FTP dialogue is displayed. The FTP server is
also prone to stalling so you have to stop it, come out of the menu and go
back in to re-start it.
[*]If you record a radio
program to the internal hard disk drive you cannot access these files via
the FTP server. You need to record programs to a USB flash drive to
be able to easily transfer the files to an MP3 player.
[*]I had problems recording to
an 8GB USB drive. A 5 minute program would end up at around 1m 40s
long and sound like it was being played on fast forward. A 2GB USB
drive worked fine. Interestingly, to some, the 8GB drive has a data
transfer write rate that is around twice that of the 2GB drive
[*]I'm not greatly knowledgeable
about the world of ripping CDs to MP3 files but the Onkyo suffers what I
think is a common problem when ripping compilation CDs, e.g. rather than
having one album with 20 tracks you end up with 20 albums (all named the
same) with 1 track each. After ripping the CD I used an MP3 editor
to alter the track metadata but in so doing you lose the artists.
[*]The remote control doesn't
feel as it's built to last.
[*]I liked the ability to rip
a CD to disk or USB by pressing just one button.
[*]If power is lost, even for
10 seconds, then the clock goes too and you have to go into the menu to
tell it to automatically set the clock.
[*]The whole unit has locked
up once in standby thereby necessitating the power cycle in (9).
[*]My wife and several female
friends don't understand why I bought it.

If someone offered me my money back I'd probably take it. I fail to
see why the FTP server is so restrictive. If Onkyo made the most of the
network connectivity and enabled Internet radio and gave it a cool web based
front end to record and play files via then I'd probably buy it and give this
to one of the (11)s so they could try and understand it.

DJ

 

[Anonymous]

I bought the Onkyo just before christmas last year, fortunately it last only 5 weeks before a major corruption on the hard drive destroyed the unit (through standard usage I might add). I say fortunately because in a nutshell the system is rubbish, the whole implementation of the ripping/naming etc of the mp3s is slow (4x I think) and as already stated with compilations (or on fact any album where Gracenote gives different artists for different tracks) you end up with multiple albums. It has a crappy mono-colour screen which can only be read from about 1 foot away which tends to negate it being remote controlled)

Fortunately Richer Sounds offered me a full refund which I then used to purchase Sony GigaJuke NAS-SC55PKE for more or less the same price (£500), which IMO is perfect. Ripping is faster (16x and it will play the tracks during ripping which the Onkyo won't), it also comes with speakers (unlike the Onkyo), has iPod docking station, wireless unit (extra ones can be bought at about £200) for streaming to a different room. It has a nice big full colour screen (which can even be viewed on a TV). And you don't get multiple albums from compilation albums.

If I had a pound for every time the Onkyo crashed and had to be unplugged from the wall (a feat in itself in my house!) it would have probably paid for itself.

People complain that the Sony doesn't have full internet radio (only live365 and shoutcast), but who really uses internet radio? DAB is fine and it also gives all the DAB text (unlike the Onkyo).

Given that the two units are about the same price (if you shop around) IMO there is no comparison between the units and I have never been more happy for a £500 piece of kit to break than the day the Onkyo gave up the ghost. In a nutshell if you want a nice looking, easy to use, massively spec'ed unit to store your CD collection on then the Sony unit is perfect.

One last thing, my wife couldn't get her head round the Onkyo, whereas she has no problems with the Sony.

 

[Anonymous]

I have all the problems you describe but there is a quick way to switch on by holding down the main button and fiddling the dial! Its crazy but its in the manual.

Do Not But. Do Not Buy. It sounds great but for the reasons above it is a complete waste of money.

Anything modern (e.g. saints alive) will not be recognised by the internal Gracenotes database. Try hooking this baby up to the net is a complete joke and if you do it does not update database. Therefore your Saints Alive become Album X....

Just don't buy. It looks like a product half finished by Onkyo. Buy mine in ebay next year for £100! It is a complete LOAD OF RUBBISH. Sorry Onkyo - this is why they stop selling it. Don't buy, don't buy!!!!

k.