An excellent inexpensive solution for an HD-capable home theater.

Inputs

The Sony HTD-DW995 is quite literally in a class of its own for one major reason: for the time being, it is the only home theater system anywhere near this price that will play audio from an HDMI source: it will play Dolby Digital, DTS, and PCM 2.0 formats. Unfortunately it does not support PCM 5.1 or any of the up-and-coming HD audio formats, so you will never be able to take advantage of HD audio with this setup. Still, for the price, the fact that this receiver can process audio over HDMI at all is really quite amazing. It has two HDMI 1.3 inputs and it will pass 1080p video through to a TV (it can also pass audio to the TV, but if you enable that feature, you may not be able to get surround sound).

The receiver has several component and composite inputs as well, and of course it has plenty of analog stereo inputs. It also has three assignable S/PDIF inputs (one RCA and two TOSLINK). These digital audio inputs can be assigned to different video inputs if you're not happy with the way they're mated out of the box (this is really only relevant to you if you use the receiver to switch video sources, which honestly isn't a very good idea outside of HDMI since analog video should be passed through as few devices as possible). You can change the labels on all of these inputs to anything you want, so if you're not happy with the name "SAT" because you don't have a satellite receiver, you can change it to something like "PS3" or "CABLE BOX" instead. It's a very flexible system, and the wide variety of inputs and the user's ability to customize them is definitely one of this receiver's strongest selling points.

Sound Quality

The sound quality on this receiver is excellent considering its price; I did not expect this kind of quality out of a system priced so low with so many other features. Although it only has basic bass and treble settings instead of a more robust equalizer, it sounds good right out of the box and it shouldn't need much adjustment. High tones are crisp, and bass response is deep and easy to control since the subwoofer is powered and it has its own volume control knob. These speakers certainly won't compete with more expensive systems, but the sound is very clean and pleasing to the ears. I can't imagine anyone looking for a home theater system in this price range who wouldn't be thrilled with the way this system sounds.

The audio settings are not as flexible as they could be. You can change the speaker balances, distances, and volume levels, but you can only adjust the front or rear speakers together as pairs and you cannot set the rear speaker pair at a farther distance than the front. Because my rear speakers are placed farther away from my listening position, it's impossible for me to accurately calibrate the receiver. I don't really notice the difference, but it's an irritating limitation that only exists (according to the manual) to discourage people from placing their speakers improperly. This is pretty ridiculous considering that the similarly priced, five-year-old Kenwood receiver that this Sony replaced allowed me to set any distance and volume level for each speaker individually with no limitations at all.

On a more positive note, the receiver has an automatic calibration feature that will play sounds through the speakers and optimize their volume levels and distances using an included microphone. The entire process involves nothing more than placing the microphone at your listening position, pressing a button, and waiting for two or three minutes while it calibrates. This seems like a gimmicky feature at first, but it works very well. It does a far more accurate job of adjusting volume levels than most people could with their ears alone, and it saved me the trouble of walking around with a tape measure trying to figure out how far all my speakers are. You can later tweak these settings if you find that something is not to your liking.

I have heard several people complain about this system's volume level being too low, but I completely disagree -- I seriously think they must be deaf, or something is different with their setup. I hardly ever turn my volume higher than 30 (that seems loud to me with most sources), and its range goes all the way up to 70. I do most of my normal listening at around 25 or less.

This receiver has several listening modes, including the standard Dolby Pro Logic II and Pro Logic modes, and a small collection of proprietary Sony audio enhancers that are interesting to play with but not very useful for serious listening. You can choose between these modes manually or you can set the receiver to auto-detect source types and play all audio in its native format (for example, sound from a stereo source will only come out of two speakers). If you set the receiver to any matrix decoding mode like Pro Logic II, it will automatically switch to a discreet channel surround mode like Dolby Digital when it detects such a source. The receiver has several additional settings, including a Midnight feature that compresses frequencies so you can listen to audio at lower volumes, and an AV Sync feature that delays the audio to compliment the video processing time of many HDTV's. Unfortunately you cannot customize the amount of delay, but its default value seems to be spot on with my TV (a 32" Sharp 1080p LCD).

User Experience

This receiver is flexible, but it's not necessarily very user-friendly. As is typical with most receivers, its screen is small and it doesn't display very many characters; this makes some menu options hard to understand, and several settings are unavailable at different times. Once you have it set up, though, you will find that you rarely have to go into the menus; the only things you will ever need to change on a regular basis are the selected input and possibly the listening mode, both of which are easily accessible from the controls on the receiver and the remote. If you get stuck, you'll find that the manual is well-arranged and easy to understand. It explains all of the receiver's features thoroughly, and I managed to sit down with it and set up the system in less than 30 minutes.

Like the remotes that come with most devices, the one that comes with this receiver is not very good. It's excessively bulky and crowded with unintuitive buttons. To make matters worse, there are cryptic markings all over it, and several of its buttons seem to have no function at all unless you use it as a universal remote. I imagine that anyone who has a receiver like this also has a lot of devices, which gives them an excellent excuse to get a good universal remote like a Logitech Harmony, which would completely solve this problem.

Overall

This system offers a surprisingly robust set of features (includng inputs, inputs, and more inputs) at a very reasonable price, without sacrificing audio quality. I highly recommend this to anyone who is looking for an inexpensive solution to add to an HD-capable home theater. It does its job very well.