Onkyo HT-RC460 user reviews

Pros Good price, lots of inputs, powered zone 2, built-in streaming with support for vtuner, Pandora, SiriusXM, Spotify, DLNA and more.

Cons Buggy and cryptic software and UI, including the Android remote. No up-scaling for component inputs except for 480i. Digital inputs can't be played on zone 2.

Summary I was having audio problems watching Uverse which I incorrectly diagnosed as imminent death of my 10 year old Sony receiver, (another story), so I had an excuse to get a new one. I ended up buying an Onkyo HT-RC460 which was the cheapest model with a powered dual zone capability which I wanted so I can annoy the neighbors with the speakers on the deck outside.

The Onkyo line was a top pick on CNET, with a caveat that there seem to be a lot of software and reliability issues. (Gritted my teeth and got the extended warranty) After a couple of days of struggling with the mutually awful user guide and GUI/software I've managed to get things configured and am pretty content.

My biggest disappointment / surprise is that the second zone audio won't work with digital inputs?!? This means for instance no audio from Uverse TV which is fed via HDMI. The workaround for this is to feed a stereo signal back from the TV to the receiver. No such option for my Roku box though.

The upside is the built-in network capability, including services like Pandora and Spotify as well as vtuner and DLNA. Using the universal 'Favorites' menu you can set up to 40 presets of internet radio from all over the world or playlists. Pretty cool, and the one line display on the receiver allows use without the TV based GUI. The Android remote app could be a big assert, but unfortunately it appears to be a creation of the same software team that built the receiver side.

Bottom line, a pretty cool receiver whose biggest drawback is the terrible software.