CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 10/20/2006
- Released on: 05/15/2006
The DVD changer's tray glides in and out with unusual smoothness, and the nearly silent disc-swapping operation takes 18 seconds. Measuring 17.1 inches wide, 3 high, and 16.5 deep, it's a little deeper than the receiver. It, too, is available separately, as the $200 DV-C6860.
The satellite speakers are petite--just 6.5-inches tall--so they can fit just about anywhere, and the matching 11.8-inch-wide center speaker is small enough to easily fit on a shelf below a TV. The speakers' molded, black-plastic cabinets look, well, like molded plastic. The black grilles are removable, though the silver-white woofers might be too garish for some tastes. The one-foot cube subwoofer is more impressive; its sturdy medium-density fiberboard cabinet is nicely finished in black ash, and its woofer is covered by a tasteful, black cloth grille.
During setup, we quickly discovered that the A/V receiver's factory presets sounded out of whack, but if you want to get going with the least amount of fuss, select the Basic Setup via the onscreen menu. It will put you in the ballpark of acceptable sound. We achieved the better results in the Manual Setup mode where we switched the speaker sizes to Small and determined the best crossover setting to be 120Hz, but Yamaha doesn't offer any info in that regard. Why the receiver doesn't come preset to sound its best with the YHT-670's speakers is one of life's little unsolved mysteries.The Yamaha YHT-670's A/V receiver boasts six 110-watt channels and the usual assortment of surround-processing modes from Dolby and DTS--along with Yamaha's proprietary Cinema DSP user-customizable surround field programs for movies and music sources.
Connectivity options are far ahead of the usual meager HTIB allotment. The receiver has a total of three rear-panel A/V inputs, which can accommodate composite, S-Video, or component-video connections. There are no HDMI connections on board, but the receiver performs component-video format conversion for your composite and S-Video sources, so you'll need only a single component-video connection from the receiver to your TV. You get four digital inputs (three optical, one coaxial), and one optical output. Owners of the ubiquitous Apple iPod can take advantage of the optional YDS-10 iPod dock ($100), which offers a single-cable connection to the receiver for both audio and video. The 5.1-channel analog inputs are useful for connecting to the corresponding outputs on SACD, DVD-Audio, Blu-ray and HD-DVD players. The speaker outputs for all channels accept banana plugs or bare wires, and there's a set of "B" stereo speaker outputs. (Interestingly, the receiver is a 6.1-channel model, despite the fact that Yamaha includes only five satellite speakers.) On the front panel, there's a composite-only A/V connection, plus a minijack input for portable audio players.
This YHT-670 is XM Satellite Radio-ready, including the ability to receive XM's two HD Surround formatted channels. To hear any XM programming, of course, you'll also need an XM Connect-and-Play or XM Mini-Tuner kit as well as an active XM subscription ($12.95 per month).
The five-disc changer plays all standard DVDs and CDs, including recordable DVDs (+R/RW and -R/RW) and home-burned CD-R/RWs (audio, MP3, and WMA, as well as JPEG photo discs).
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