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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
5.0 stars
"Very impressed with the 354"
Pros: Easy set up, great sound and great video, this is one very nice AVR.
Cons: I was able to manually adjust the room EQ and liked that a little better than the auto setup, but I don't know if that could really be considered a 'con'.
Summary: This is our second H/K AVR as we previously owned the AVR 247. With the 247, we had some issues primarily with the on/off control and when selecting an HD channel, it would like to 'hunt' and the channel would momentarily bounce in and out, sometimes 10 times before locking in on that channel. To try and get this resolved, I contacted the technical support people at H/K and the walked through all of the issues and possible fixes a great many times (patiently) until it was decided that the 247 should be replaced. Since we had 'The Bridge' option, they replaced the 247 with the AVR 354 (the 254 doesn't have it). All we paid for was the return shipping on the 247 (about $30.00). Since receiving the 354, I am very impressed with the receiver. The setup was easier, the audio and video options offer more choices and the menu screens are very easy to navigate, including 'The Bridge II', which comes with the 354. The audio is very good and although we can only get Dolby Digital via cable broadcast, even that sounds great, especially for HD channels with 5.1 sound. It plays our iPod with a slick onscreen menu and with simulated 5-channel stereo and even the compressed audio sounds good. Our Blu-ray player never sounded better, with either DVD's or CD's in Dolby True HD or PCM. The 354 will upscale video content to 1080p, but we have it set to 720p output for our Sony TV's native resolution, but you can choose input and output resolution easily. Needless to say, the 'hunting' issues we had on HD channels don't exist with the 354. We have everything (except The Bridge) connected via HDMI to the 354 and it has one output to the television, so it's our 'media center'. Before purchasing our first Harmon Kardon receiver, I had reservations about the spec's, primarily the watts per channel being lower on average, than their competition. Believe me, that is not an issue. We haven't come close to using the 354's audio capabilities and this receiver maybe has the sweetest sound that I've ever heard and that's at low or high volume levels.
For performance, for value and for the absolute best technical support I've ever heard of, I couldn't imagine looking for another receiver in the future and not choosing a Harmon Kardon.
