Browsing the blog archives for February, 2007.

Pioneer RCS-606H Home Cinema System Review

Technology

As I said in my previous post about my new surround system, the Pioneer RCS-606H, I would come back with a review after testing it out.
After trying it out for almost two weeks I’ve ended up loving it - and disliking it a bit.
First of all the positive sides:

  • Good sound!
  • It looks good!
  • Automatic setup of the system with a microphone.

And lots of negative stuff:

  • The remote feels quite cheap - the bottom sliding cover is quite loose and seems like it will fall off any day.
  • Lots of buttons on the remote I wish wasn’t hidden under the cover and some that could have been hidden.
  • Do not store radio channels automatically.
  • Only plays region 2 DVDs.
  • “one touch copy” do not work - supposedly because my television do not support it, but there is no documentation of what kind of functionality the television must have to support it.
  • Ugly menus. Seems like they were designed back in 1996.
  • The Jukebox-functionality is crap! Terrible overview of the music you got on the hard drive and what a mess it is to actually copy music over from a external hard drive or DVD. First of all it only supports FAT drives, so no chance for me to connect any of my external drives, and secondary it only allows a maximum of 999 files -or- 99 folders with music. What the heck is going on - don’t Pioneer think I’ll fit more than 999 MP3s on the 150GB internal hard drive?
  • No mute-button - would it cost Pioneer that much to implement something that simple?
  • The TV-guide system “Guide Plus” is of course not supported with the channels I have (normal antenna)

Seems perhaps like the negative side is a lot bigger than the positive, but it’s not. All-in-all I’m quite pleased with it. All the negative stuff is just details - it’s good sound I want after all. It would however be smart of Pioneer to look at the design of the menus - the system is so much better than it looks like when you’re browsing through the horrible menus.

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