Denon HEOS AVR AV Receiver Review & Comments

I certainly don't have a Logitech Harmony, because I prefer to use individual remote controls, see towards the bottom right corner of my avatar, which is the seating in my parlour. So I have nine remotes in the parlour, six in the kitchen, seven in my bedroom and five in the front bedroom. In my case I'd have to buy four Harmonys, one for each room. I'm not sure how much they cost, about £100? But I won't be getting one. Besides, I like the look of each room's remote controls all clustered together!
Fair enough, I've got 3 harmonies and about 15 years no domestic arguments...Cost about £350, value priceless :)
 
@dejongj So that's about £120 per Harmony, not too far off my guess. But I also have no domestic arguments, because I've lived essentially alone (apart from occasional visiting friends) all my adult life, certainly since I got interested in hi-fi decades ago, and so there is no equal partner in my household with whom to argue - what I say, goes! :D
 
Forget about the remotes, you can have wires and big boxes all over the place :)

In my case it was more that one of them was £200, and the other two around £75 :). But the fancy one does everything, including act like a touch screen remote to manage the intensity of our Philips hue lighting :) Great piece of kit, better than the Philips remote dare I say...
 
Forget about the remotes, you can have wires and big boxes all over the place :)

Believe me, I do! Both plenty wires (about 200m of cabling between the various rooms, so that I can see the same source on two, three or all four televisions at once, for when I do my film shows and one film is so popular that more people want to see it that can be accommodated in one room) and lots of loudspeakers, half of which are floorstanding models, and various electronic boxes of varying size ..... Ask Mr Steve Withers, who reviewed this Denon receiver, he's been to my place thrice, to do various television calibrations!
 
AV receiver do not include the inbuilt ability to wirelessly stream audio to the surround speakers so you'd fitstly need a receiver with pre outs for those channels you want to stream and you then need to use wifi transmitters attached to those pre outs to be able to stream said channels to active wireless speakers elsewhere in the room. The wireless abilities of an AV receiver is usually associated with sending a wireless signal to an additional stereo zone and not associated with the main room's surround setup.
That's why it is ADDED to the receiver. :)
It's a very easy addition to a receiver.
Any speaker that is 'wireless' is still wired to power, so true wireless does not exist.
 
That's why it is ADDED to the receiver. :)
It's a very easy addition to a receiver.
Any speaker that is 'wireless' is still wired to power, so true wireless does not exist.

No you cannot just add a pair of surround wireless speakers. As said, no it isn't easily added. As said, you need an AV receiver with pre outs and you need to use transmitters connected to the pre out to facilitate having wireless surrounds. AV receiver do not have inbuilt wireless capabilities in association with the main room speakers. This is the unique selling point of the HEOS AVR.

Besides which, find me a pair of wireless speakers that aren't orientated at direct streaming and come with a transmitter that facilitates their use with a conventional amplifier? There are very few options available. Most wireless speakers are intended to be used with handheld iOS or Android devices which stream the audio to them and they do not come with any form of transmitter that would enable you to send a signal from the AV receiver to them via that receiver's analogue pre outs.
 
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The capabilities are not built in, as said, they are added to the receiver if you want 'wireless' but then they will still have wires. :)
Oh, and this one is still butt ugly. lol

My Yamaha will outperform it any day. I think that is the point you may have missed.

Thanks.
 
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The capabilities are not built in, as said, they are added to the receiver if you want 'wireless' but then they will still have wires. :)
Oh, and this one is still butt ugly. lol

My Yamaha will outperform it any day. I think that is the point you may have missed.

Thanks.
I think the point you are missing is who the target audience is of these kind of receivers. It is much more of a lifestyle product compared to an enthousiaste product.

As such they wouldn't want to have dingly d'ongles hanging off off it. They'd likely also can't or won't want to be running cabling from their receiver to where there are speakers. They likely have power points and will be happy with a slightly compromised location for the speakers.

I really don't class this the same as some diy option. That is to me totally missing the point. That is like saying why get a camper van when you can throw a mattress in the back of a Ford transit.

I'd say this is more pitched against Sonos home cinéma then anything else.
 
Fair enough. I suppose this setup is good enough for those that only want good enough.
 
I like this. Just a thought, but...

How about a 'two soundbar' solution?

You could have a small unit (like this) under the TV. A soundbar at the front for LCR. A soundbar on the back wall for LS, RL, RL, RS. And a sub, obviously.

I used to have a Panasonic 'all-in-one' and there was a rear surround wireless unit for around £150.

There has to be a market.
 
I like this. Just a thought, but...

How about a 'two soundbar' solution?

You could have a small unit (like this) under the TV. A soundbar at the front for LCR. A soundbar on the back wall for LS, RL, RL, RS. And a sub, obviously.

I used to have a Panasonic 'all-in-one' and there was a rear surround wireless unit for around £150.

There has to be a market.

Denon already make an HEOS soundbar:
Wireless Soundbar with Subwoofer - HEOS HomeCinema | HEOS by Denon

HEOS BAR | Soundbar with Surround Sound with High-Res Audio - HEOS by Denon
 
One of the criticisms levelled at this system is that the surrounds cannot be truly wireless.

However, there is a battery pack available for the HEOS 1 that will make it completely wireless (well, for 6 hours anyway):

HEOS GoPack HS2

This could make it quite appealing to me, but unfortunately the combined cost of the receiver + 2 surrounds + 2 battery packs is just too much in my opinion.
 
One of the criticisms levelled at this system is that the surrounds cannot be truly wireless.

However, there is a battery pack available for the HEOS 1 that will make it completely wireless (well, for 6 hours anyway):

HEOS GoPack HS2

This could make it quite appealing to me, but unfortunately the combined cost of the receiver + 2 surrounds + 2 battery packs is just too much in my opinion.
LOL
 

I grant you it's slighty niche, but I can see something like this working really well for people who cannot accommodate a wired set of surround speakers. Assuming you can find full-time duties for a couple of HEOS 1s elsewhere (kitchen, bedroom maybe) you would just unplug them and pop them at the back of the lounge when required. Assuming they are plugged in the rest of the time, 6 hours is ample for an evening's TV or movies.
 
Not if you are watching "The Hobbit"
I think the tech will catch on better when they also incorporate wireless charging something like the in road chargers for cars being produced.
 
What about hover boards, when will we be getting them?
 
What about hover boards, when will we be getting them?

The technology for wireless power already exists:

http://witricity.com/

Note that this is very different to the kind of inductive charging tech that has been used up until now, which requires the device to be pretty much touching the charger. This new tech can work over much large distances - 2 meters or more - so a home with transmitters built into the floors could in theory be completely wireless.

Dell are just about to release a laptop that uses Witricity tech for wireless charging, so it'll be interesting to see how well it works.
 
The technology for wireless power already exists:

http://witricity.com/

Note that this is very different to the kind of inductive charging tech that has been used up until now, which requires the device to be pretty much touching the charger. This new tech can work over much large distances - 2 meters or more - so a home with transmitters built into the floors could in theory be completely wireless.

Dell are just about to release a laptop that uses Witricity tech for wireless charging, so it'll be interesting to see how well it works.

So you only need to build a home with it built into the floors? Do you think Denon will be giving away vouchers to help with this?

Besides which, the resonator plate still needs to be adacent to the device being charged or the building would need to be lined with an intermediary resonant material. This wouldn't facilitate a device being able to charge itself anywhere in your home irrespective of where the charger is and the charging plate would still need to be in close proximity to the device with its own mains electricity supply or the intermediate material would need to be where it would fascilitate distance devices being able to charge themselves. Would simply sinking wires into the walls and having wired speakers be cheaper?

I liked the idea of being able to drive an electric vehicle over the resonator to charge the vehicle a good idea though. It removes the need for hard wired vehicle charging points.
 
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So you only need to build a home with it built into the floors? Do you think Denon will be giving away vouchers to help with this?

Of course the path to a fully wireless home will necessarily have a few intermediate steps. For example, the Dell laptop comes with a charging pad that you place on your desktop. Something similar could be built into appropriate pieces of furniture (e.g. tables, sideboards, kitchen counters etc.) so that devices placed on or nearby are powered wirelessly. I believe Ikea have already done something like this with the older inductive tech, so why not this much improved alternative? Some models of car already include inductive wireless chargers, so they too will be an obvious candidate for an upgrade.

Once you have a few locations for wireless charging in the home or car, the convenience factor of building the tech into new devices is enormous, so I'm pretty sure this stuff will catch on faster than you may think.
 
When I preview'd this model almost 18 to 20 months ago, I asked why they hadn't named it "DHT" after the older (Denon Home Theater) range. I did add that they needed to replace the "Home" for "HEOS" (Denon HEOS Theater) though, I think this would have been a great way to revive a Deno range, that was so popular in its day :D

For me, this is who this product is for, it's stylish, has the ability to surprise and kinda does what it says on the tin.

Regards, Shane.
 

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