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Strengths: Price, flexibility, power and durability.
Weaknesses: Dim display. Instruction manual can be vague. Remote control overly complicated. Plain appearance. No HDTV pass- through.
Summary: 2004-09-01 12:57:55 For the money it's hard to beat a receiver with more than 100 watts RMS per each of it's six channels (not including the sub), a microphone to allow the built-in processor to allow do acoustic calibration, lots of digital inputs, multiple types of surround decoding including the same Motorola 48-bit DSP that the movie theaters use, and adequate cooling despite being mounted in a very poorly ventilated media cabinet. The only real possible drawback was the lack of a HDTV pass-through. But since I own a commercial plasma, and not a regular home plasma set, I wouldn't use the HDTV pass-through function. (fewer connections equal better picture) I saw receivers from other manufacturers that were double, triple, even quadruple the price that didn't offer any advantages over the Pioneer. Maybe the more expensive units looked fancier, had minutely better specs or had a gizmo or gadget that probably no one would use, but as far as day to day useability goes, the Pioneer D914K is just too good a deal to ignore. If you're an audio geek as I am, (McIntosh, Bang & Olufsen, electrostats, custom turntables, etc.) yeah, you can do better than the Pioneer, but ... it's going to cost you. To find a really discernable difference in the electronics, I found it necessary to spend a couple of grand or more. (speakers and their placement are far more important) The only reason to purchase a more expensive receiver is if you have a specific need for more power or additional inputs. For less than 300 bucks it will decode almost everything, power almost any speaker (save the most inefficient), be reliable, has a clean sound and will survive poor ventilation in a media cabinet crammed with electronics. I don't even see upgrading to a more expensive Pioneer unit as an option. It's that good a value. Forget that it's not THX certified, as that's just marketing, this media receiver is a tremendous buy for all but the most hard core media room fanatic.
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