Review: Denon DHT1356XP Home Cinema system |
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| Written by Rene Millman | |
| Monday, 06 August 2007 | |
 When we first clapped eyes on this piece of kit from Denon we thought that this must cost
an absolute fortune - it looks to us like a very high end receiver - you
will be please to know that you can buy this and not have to say sorry to your
other half (too much).
The Denon DHT1356XP comes as a receiver (AVR1306) and
speaker set (SYS56HT). The ones we have in for review
are in silver and normal size for a receiver (i.e. large -
147x434x417mm). Getting it out of the box and set up was ok - although
putting our test speaker cables into the back of the amp proved a bit
problematical as the our test wires were very thick and probably the best you
could find. That was a bit tricky as most of this was done by ourselves while
lying down. The good news was we did this while "My Family" so we were around
the back of the telly and couldn't hear the "humour" - so there's always a
positive in any situation.The manual doesn't really help much, luckily us being tech journalist we like to think that we know a thing or two about setting up gadgets. Once we connected up the speakers and sub-woofer (using our thick wire and discarding the thin wires provided with the system (we didn't even bother getting them out of the box to be honest), we attempted to get some sounds out of the system. In reality it is a bit of an effort trying to work out how to do this and it took an age to figure out what the manual needs you to do. The back of the unit is pretty much well laid out and logical (i.e. everything is labelled correctly - you plug the DVD leads into the DVD input and plug the digital coaxial lead into the coaxial input.) Eventually we managed to figure everything out and got some sounds out of it.  Like we said there are just about inputs for everything.It features Dolby Digital / Dolby Pro Logic II, DTS / DTS Neo:6 / DTS 96/24. It boasts 75 Watts RMS per channel and also has two coaxial and two optical inputs. The speakers look pretty stylish as well. As this scores really highly in the looks department as far as the receiver and speakers are concerned you'd think that the remote control would be a object of desire too! Sadly this is not the case - it looks really out of place next to the ubercool home cinema system. To the point where we deliberately hide the remote down the sofa. But the most important question is - does it sound any good? The answer is a definitive yes. Having listened to the system for quite a while and used it to playback DVDs and TV (Sky, Freeview and analogue) the sound quality is absolutely amazing with a richness of bass that doesn't overcloud the rest of the sound. Why might you ask would we be blown away by this. The answer is the price. We have looked at tons of amps in the past and the look and sound of the system punches way above its weight. We managed to find one of these for sale on Amazon for around £249.99, this is an unbelievable price for something this good looking and sharp sounding. Go out and buy one - you won't be disappointed. Rating 9.5/10 |
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