Pioneer VSX-819H-K

Pros: Tons of features for the price. Fairly straightforward setup. Decent sound after tweaking the settings.

Cons: Slow Dolby processing causes audio lag. "Tinny" sound compared to Yamaha & Onkyo receivers of comparable price range. Flimsy materials used for component jack casings.

Summary: I really wanted to love this receiver. It had everything I was looking for at a better price than the competition. I set everything up and used it for almost 2 weeks. I was a little disappointed in the sound quality at first. Having mainly used Yamaha & Onkyo equipment for years, I was surprised at how thin the sound field was. It sounded at first like a higher-end HTIB system, but after some tweaking of the settings I was able to get the sound to a place I thought I could live with. After all, I had made the choice to save money & NOT get another Yamaha or Onkyo, so I had only myself to blame for the somewhat diminished sound quality. I was prepared to move forward and enjoy the unit when a much bigger problem became apparent. I didn't notice it at first, because it was so slight, but after a few days I realized that the audio on Dolby Digital material was always slightly behind the video. While the unit has a delay feature that enables the user to set the audio back, there isn't any way to "speed it up" to match video. This resulted in the maddening frustration of lips not being in sync with the dialogue track. I tried everything to isolate the problem to a particular source or hookup, but every source I tried (DVD, XBOX, & Cable DVR) presented the same problem with Dolby Digital soundtracks. After trying dozens of different configurations, I came to the conclusion it must be a problem with the Dolby Processor, as DTS soundtracks were perfectly fine.
Some caveats: I was NOT using the HDMI hookups due to some non-HD components in my system. Everything was connected via optical cables & component video. Maybe if I had the ability to connect via HDMI the sync features of the 1.3 protocol would have fixed the problem. Regardless... buyer beware.