Pioneer VSX-822-K 5.1-Channel Network Ready A/V Receiver (Discontinued by Manufacturer)

Great price, but the onscreen menus are really 1997 vintage. My friend has a similar Samsung and it is a world apart in this aspect.The sound is wonderful, and it was easy to set up - except that I can hardly believe that they expect you to be able to follow the instructions. I would have flunked out of college English classes if I had written with such little understanding and precision.It is beautiful looking! In a general sense I am glad that bought it. The supplier delivered ahead of schedule... fantastic!Edit: 06/28/2013. I am still happy with this receiver.Edit 08/04/2013. No quite as happy with this receiver... becoming more critical as I get to know it. I object to the delay when changing modes, ie. from Tuner to Cable/Satellite. The sound delay is up to 15 seconds, and has become a negative experience. Another objection is obtaining a pleasing profile of sound. First of all, the manual is nearly useless re part of the device usage. The only method is via experimentation... not what I had expected from a "long time" audio company such as Pioneer. The manual at first glance is technically perfect, but is not very helpful in anything other than getting your speakers connected and turning it on.

I got this as a factory refurb and so far it has been working fine. Good sound, excellent set of features. Really enjoying the network play options, such as Pandora and Internet Radio. Setup was a bit more complicated than I would have liked. Most of the setup requires attaching a display (TV). Once the TV was attached, I had to update the firmware of the unit. This required downloading a file from the Internet and putting it on a USB stick and plugging the USB stick into the receiver. The firmware update completed without issue. Next step was configuring the auto-surround, which involved putting a (included) microphone where I normally sit. The receiver then played some noise on each of the speakers, and automatically adjusted the surround sound. Surround sound was good afterwards. Configuring Pandora was somewhat of a pain. The interface for inputting user name and password really sucked and required me to press the up arrow button like 60 times per character, and I have a long user name and password, so it took a long time to input. Once inputted, it failed to connect because the - and the _ characters are hard to distinguish on the OSD, so I had to start all over again from the beginning. Sigh. But I got it done and was listening to Pandora. The OSD for Pandora really sucks. For a HD receiver, the OSD is very low rez and looks terrible on a 47-inch TV. Pandora also doesn't display track information properly, for example it will show the name of the band and the album, but not the song. Hopefully they will fix this. But who cares, since I'm more concerned that the music plays ok vs .looking at the OSD. I don't like CDs so I have my record player plugged into one of the audio inputs. Kind of lame that there was no audio input labelled for Phono, so I had to plug it into the port labelled CD. (So I have to press CD on the remote to listen to records.) Sound is fine though. Overall, this receiver has some faults, but nothing that would stop me from buying it again, and none of the faults have been related to sound quality or basic functionality. Given the choice to spend the money elsewhere, I would still pick this receiver again, especially since I got it at half-price because it was a factory refurb.

This Pioneer VSX-822-k is a great receiver once you figure out how it works.It is difficult to understand some of the logic involved in this receiver. You must have a TV connected to view most of the menu items which made it a poor choice for my garage. However as a Video receiver it works just fine. It takes getting used to waiting for the sound and menu items to start to work. That is the most frustrating part of learning to use it, is waiting after your selection to start to hear music. But I got it for the Pandora and AirPlay. Pandora works after you download the update with no problems. so everyone that cannot get it to work must not have used the update. I have even figured out how to turn various inputs on without a TV hooked up. All in all its a pretty decent receiver, especially as a factory return model as I only shelled out $150.00. But I did have to buy a flat screen for the garage just so I could be able to see the menus.So to recap:Pros: Great value for the money, has Pandora and AirPlay and an iPhone dock (that supposedly will play video through the TV)Cons: Difficult to set up and play at first (and I'm about as technical as you can get)

This is my third or fourth receiver, and I've always had trouble getting the sound balanced, especially the subwoofer. The VSX-522-K solved that issue for me. It has a microphone you place at your viewing position during setup and it balances everything perfectly. It has never sounded so good.It was easy to set up, mostly just working with pure HDMI sources. If you want to use a separate connection for the audio channel, you just hit the "signal select" button on the remote to cycle through until you get it. After you set it up, it's one button to switch between sources.It's not without quirks, though, which is why only four stars. The on screen display doesn't work via HDMI, only the RCA video output. That's not that big a deal, though, since you only need the on screen display for the one time setup.The other problem is the audio doesn't work with some older Roku boxes. We have a first-gen, a Roku 2 XS, a Roku 2 HD, and a Roku 3. The audio only worked on the Roku HD and the Roku 3, but on those boxes it works very well, with a high-quality sound.Edit: I took off another star since I have found other combinations of equipment where the video doesn't work, like a Roku 3 with my wife's projector. It seems to be the luck of the draw if it will work or not.