avs

Sony's new AV receivers boast Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and AirPlay, plus spiffy new interface (hands-on)

Sony has been one of the few bright spots in the slothlike AV receiver market, with last year's STR-DN1030 being the first with long-overdue features like built-in Bluetooth, AirPlay, and Wi-Fi in a $500 receiver.

Rather than resting on its laurels, Sony goes even further with its two new AV receivers, packing in more features. The STR-DN840 and STR-DN1040 continue to stand alone this year in offering Wi-Fi, AirPlay, and Bluetooth, while the STR-DN1040 has upped the ante with eight HDMI inputs and an overhauled user interface.

Here's how I'd break down the most important features:

STR-DN840 ($… Read more

Yamaha RX-V475 review: Great-sounding receiver, light on features

When we set up our first head-to-head listening tests with the latest crop of 2013 AV receivers, Yamaha's RX-V475 ($400 street) came out on top, besting Pioneer's VSX-823-K ($400) and even Denon's $600 AVR-E400.

But edging out its competitors in our subjective listening tests isn't quite enough to make the RX-V475 our top pick at the $400 price point. Differences in AV receiver sound quality tend to be subtle, and factors such as room acoustics and your choice of speakers have a much larger impact on the sound quality you'll hear.

Despite its advantage in … Read more

Top five power-line adapters: When Wi-Fi fails you

In home networking, the fastest way -- in terms of data speed -- to connect devices together is via network cables. However, running cables properly, which involves making networking ports and connector heads, is no easy task. This is part of the reason the wireless network (Wi-Fi) has become so popular. But chances are, there's a spot in your home that the Wi-Fi signal can't reach, because of distance or thick walls. This is when a power-line connection can be a useful alternative.

Power-line adapters basically turn the electrical wiring of a home into network cables for a computer network. You need at least two power-line adapters to form the first power-line connection. The first adapter is connected to the router and the second to the Ethernet-ready device at the far end. There are some routers on the market, such as the D-Link DHP-1320, that have built-in support for power-line connectivity, meaning you can skip the first adapter. After the first connection, you just need one more adapter to add another Ethernet-ready device to the home network.

Apart from the ability to bridge the network through thick walls, power-line connections are also a lot more stable than Wi-Fi signal and have as low latency and a regular Ethernet wired connections.

Currently there are two main standards for power-line networking, HomePlug AV and Powerline AV 500. They offer speed caps of 200Mbps and 500Mbps, respectively. The following is the list of top five power-line adapters on the market. This list is sorted by the review date, starting with the most recently reviewed. It will be updated as more devices are reviewed.… Read more

Denon AVR-E400 review: A somewhat simpler AV receiver at a cost

Even the most die-hard home theater buffs will admit that setting up an AV receiver can be a chore, and that goes double for those who don't know what they're doing. Denon's AVR-E400 ($600 street) is at the top of the company's midrange AV receiver line, for which the company has focused on ease of use in 2013. There are worthwhile improvements: an onscreen setup guide, a simpler remote, and push-in speaker connectors that are more convenient with bare speaker wire.

But in other ways, the AVR-E400 misses the mark. It's hard to truly herald … Read more

Bing serves up more malicious sites than Google, report says

Although most search engines have measures in place to protect users against trojans, malicious sites still manage to crop up from time to time -- even in the top search results. An independent testing lab in Germany by the name of AV-Test has just completed an 18-month survey to find out which search engines are the worst offenders.

The lab tested 40 million Web sites (PDF) across seven search engines -- Google and Bing, the world's two most popular search engines; Yandex, Russia's biggest search engine; Blekko; peer-to-peer search engine Faroo; Teoma, better known as Ask.com; and … Read more

Windows 8's rising security tide raises all antivirus boats

In one of the first independent tests of third-party security suites on Windows 8, nearly all antivirus and anti-malware software tested well. What may surprise you is that even without a third-party suite, Windows 8 is relatively resistant to modern threats like zero-day attacks, according to the report.

Independent German security suite evaluators AV-Test.org publish bimonthly tests that rate the effectiveness of the biggest Windows security suites out there and rated all 26 of the suites they tested on Windows 8 in January and February as "certified," including Windows 8 itself. This is because Windows 8 comes … Read more

New Marantz AV receivers stay slim

AV receivers have a well-deserved reputation as giant, unsightly boxes, but over the last few years Marantz has shown that good sound can come in smaller packages.

The company refreshed its AV receiver line today adding two new slimline models, the NR1504 and NR1604. They're two new step-up models to last year's NR1403, which will continue to stay in the line.

Here's how I'd break down the most important features:

NR1504 ($500): 5.1 channels, six HDMI inputs (including one front-panel input), Audyssey MultEQ, networking via Ethernet, built-in AirPlay, networking, setup assistant NR1604 ($650) step-ups: 7.… Read more

New Marantz AV receivers stay slim

AV receivers have a well-deserved reputation as giant, unsightly boxes, but over the last few years Marantz has shown that good sound can come in smaller packages.

The company refreshed its AV receiver line today adding two new slimline models, the NR1504 and NR1604. They're two new step-up models to last year's NR1403, which will continue to stay in the line.

Here's how I'd break down the most important features:

NR1504 ($500): 5.1 channels, six HDMI inputs (including one front-panel input), Audyssey MultEQ, networking via Ethernet, built-in AirPlay, networking, setup assistant NR1604 ($650) step-ups: 7.… Read more

How to save the AV receiver

There are a lot of reasons why sound bars are taking over home audio, but one of them is increasingly obvious: AV receivers are terrible.

I've reviewed a lot of them for CNET, and while receivers are fine for enthusiasts who know what they're doing, they're a frustrating experience for everyone else. Most technology gets better over time, but AV receivers seem frozen in amber, with giant chassis, thick inscrutable manuals, and onscreen interfaces that could only generously be called "standard-definition." They're embarrassingly backward compared with the rest of your home theater gear, yet … Read more