Onkyo HTS3200

[admin_exported]

I have seen the above product at comet and am thinking this maybe better than buying a brand new Blu home theatre systems. Just wondered if there was anyone out there who has one or previously had one. I am interested in knowing whether there were any flaws with this. For £299 I think this is good VFM.

 

[Liam19]

Until recently I was using the Onkyo HTS5105 home theatre in-a-box system, which was very similar but with a better spec (i.e. active subwoofer, multichannel analogue inputs). While I was generally impressed with it considering I only paid £310 for it, bear a few things in mind.

First of all, these basic receivers are only able to process audio signals from either their stereo analogue inputs or their digital optical/coax inputs, meaning that HD audio over HDMI is out of the question. Even if your Blu-ray player can decode onboard, the receiver cannot accept the decoded LPCM signal over HDMI. If you're willing to accept plain old DD/DTS over optical/coax though, this may not be such a problem. I am still using the receiver from my old package, but since it has multichannel analogue inputs I can get HD audio from my Panasonic DMP-BD80.

Secondly, the subwoofer that comes with the HTS3200 system is passive (i.e. powered by the receiver). From looking at the connections on the receiver, there doesn't seem to be any way to connect an active (i.e. independently powered) sub to it either. So this hampers your ability to upgrade your 5.1 speakers at a later date, as I have recently done.

All in all, I'd say you're probably better off with one of the acclaimed all-in-one systems from Sony or Panasonic. At least then you'll get the sonic benefits of Blu-ray.