Sony SATHD300 DIRECTV HD Receiver w/ Dolby Digital Passthrough & Universal Remote Commander
good news and bad news
Sony tells me they have new code that fixes the audio drops but, and it does, continously, but they say DirecTV hasn't decided to transmit it so shiping it back is the only way to get it fixed. <BR>The Color is excellent on a HDTV station via Satallite and even better over air with my Sampo 42\\" Plasma Display on the DVI input. And you can record off the S-VHS while you watch DVI, the only problem there is that Sony reinvented channel numbers so you can't get it onto the local HDTV stations unless you can find a way to get yout TIVO or other DVI to punch in #.# (2.1,4.1,5.1,7.1,7.2,9.1) I can't even find a remote that can do that let alone a DVR or VCR. BetaMax all over again. Oh, sure the HD300 is suppose to be able to run a VCR, except DirecTV doesn't fill the program guide for anything but DirecTV so forget recording your local stations that way. The Documentation sez you can Edit the channel list, No, not really, you can't delete anything short of a full reset on the unit, good luck in trying to figure that out and once you do you have to setup everything from scratch. It has alternate program guides but they don't stick, you go back to all everytime you go there. They have a way to hide things except they don't really hide anything to the select by channel, only to the up/down button and if you use multiple feeds, DirecTV, Cable and Antenna, you will get multiple channels with the same number and no way to dial up any but the first one and step forward to the others. No way to remap channels, especially HDTV to numbers without dot's in them. <BR> It's a box with everything and no way to use it, an experiment that has gone horrably wrong. I thought after the HD200 they would have done better but no, worse.  Oh yes, I couldn't get the fibre sound to work with my JVC surround sound, so much for that. The Sony hotline is the luck of the draw, if you don't like the help you get call back and you may get better, my experiance was 1 in 3 calls was helpful, the rest were bull and go away I can't help you. I've run out of space to say more...