Sony HT-DDW740 Theater System
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- Front Speaker: 2 Way
- Main Speakers Power Output: 90 Watts
- Included Components: DVD Player
- Number Of Speakers: 5 Speakers and Subwoofer
- Subwoofer Power Output: 100 Watts
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It does exactly what it says on the box. And very well.
Pros
Great if you don't want the hassle of many boxes. Amazing for games.
Cons
Might get lost in a large room.
Recommended it?
Yes
The Bottom Line:
If you want a quick solution, to introduce yourself to cinema sound, this is the kit for you. If you're a high-end user, you might want to go elsewhere.
I've yearned for a cinema sound system for the last 5 years. Various things have colluded to prevent me from getting what I wanted. I used to be a big fan of 'separates' - loved the wiring and the flexibility, but now I think some of those units are a lot more hassle than they're worth. So when I saw the Sony unit, I was intrigued. Cinema sound and a 5-DVD changer in one box?
I stumped up for one and took it home. Wiring this thing up is about as simple as you could want. All the plugs are colour-coded and there's ample wire to get to the back of my room. ( The room it's in is 12ft x 36ft ). I plumped for some speaker stands for the rear speakers - not Sony, but then I couldn't find any Sony ones I liked. The subwoofer is one the floor to the left of the TV, the centre speaker is on top of my satellite receiver and the left and right front speakers are naturally, to the left and right of my TV. (I'll get them further out when money allows 2 more speaker stands).
This box of tricks does Dolby Digital, Dolby Surround and DTS as it's three main sound modes. There's a bunch of fake surround modes for stereo sources, like CDs etc too. I popped Episode 1 into the player and skipped to the pod race. Good Lord! I could feel the deep revving of the engines. I could hear ambient sound all around! This was amazing! On to the race and the various effects from left to right and front to rear were crisply reproduced.
After an evening of going through just about every DVD I had, I concluded that this was the right system for me, in my circumstances. It's certainly not the most powerful system you'll ever see, but for an out-of-the-box system, it's bloody brilliant. The fact that it's designed as eye-candy doesn't hurt either. The swish little chrome and silver speakers look great. Movie music and ambient sounds come over brilliantly. The bass isn't particularly powerful, but it's enough to rattle the windows if you crank it up, and the sound itself isn't woolly or fuzzy. Regarding the comments in another review, my plastic cover on top of the woofer vibrates too. I put a couple of magazines on it and that cured it though. Still - it's a design oversight you'd think they'd have thought of.
The unit has a slot-loading 5-DVD changer. Changeover is a little slow, but it works well enough. It plays DVDs (duh), CDs, SA-CDs, and MP3 CD-R/CD-RWs. Sony give you a SA-CD sampler in the box and it's amazing to hear the difference between a surround-encoded music CD and a regular one. It's the old format wars though - will it be DVD-audio or SA-CD that wins? I could care less at the moment. I have an audio CD player for that.
One downside to an all-in-one system is futureproofing. ie. it isn't. With a component system, you can upgrade the DVD player and amp separately. With an all-in-one, you're making a commitment for a few years, to stick with one unit.
The DVD player is pretty good in this one though. It's a progressive-scan player, and compared to my 2-year-old Sony, the picture difference is quite staggering. I wouldn't have thought two years could make that much difference, but the image is better than my old player. Colours are better, noise is less and the blacks are actually black, not grey! The menu system is the same as most other Sony players I've seen. The remote, however, is designed more as an exercise in Ikea-esque form rather than function. The buttons are small, the text is even smaller, and the glow-in-the-dark back is a great novelty but completely useless in practical use.
This is a shame because the on-screen menus for setting up the DVD player could have been better. And once you're playing a movie, all your setup information appears on the screen on the front of the main unit. This requires good eyesight and a deft hand on the remote. This is about the only problem I've found so far. It's easier to stop the movie and mess about with the full-screen menus than it is to try and do it all on the little display on the front. With the fiddly little remote buttons, it's easy to bollocks-up your settings just using the on-unit display without really realising what you've done.
Speaking of setup, this system has the usual bells and whistles to set it up - test one to make sure you've got the speakers wired up right etc etc. You can adjust all the speaker spacings too. It's worth measuring the distance from your couch to the speakers rather than guessing. With this system, changing the system measurements does make a difference to the sound. There's a lot of flexibility for the placement of the rear speakers too. Their height can be in one of two zones, and their front-to-rear position can be in an arc about 75? off either ear. Ie. from beside you to almost right behind you. The manual is good at explaining these setup options and for anyone who isn't a complete buffoon, it won't take you more than a couple of minutes to get it right.
It's worth pointing out that if you're a power user of DVD and home cinema equipment, I suspect you'll be disappointed with this system. To my ears, in a 12ft x 36ft living room with a big TV, it sounds and looks the best I've ever had. To an audiophile or videophile who has equipment to tell them when something is wrong, I suspect you types will listen to this unit and turn your noses up in disgust. I'm sure you'd prefer valve amplifiers and 40cu ft. speaker housings. But for the rest of us, I think you could do far worse than get acquainted with this little system. It's unobtrusive but the sound and picture are great for the average person. I nitpick my sound and picture to a certain extent; everyone does. But this really is a spectacularly clever system for this price.
And therein lies the rub. You *always* get what you pay for. Here, for $450, you're getting a DVD player, amp and speakers. If you were to pay $450 just for an amp, of course it should sound better. And it will. But that's not the point. The point of this Sony unit is that it's a great way into the home cinema experience for most people, and for most of you, it will be more than enough.
June 5th update
Last night, for the first time, I hooked up my PS2 and Gamecube to the Sony system. For neither console, could the system auto-detect what surround mode was being used, but you can manually change the sound field using the remote. So I set it to Dolby Pro Logic II surround and it's transformed the way I play games. I spent most of last night casting demon spells in Eternal Darkness just to hear the booming echo that happens when you do. For my racing / driving games, you get a sense of the cars behind and to the sides of you without needing to use the mirrors so much. It's great. Since purchasing the system I've also re-watched almost every one of my DVDs and for those too, it's transformed the viewing experience.
September 16th update
The system has now been moved into my basement, into a light-controlled environment, and hooked up to my newly purchased InFocus X1 projector. Projected on to a white wall of my basement, the picture measures about 100 inches diagonal, and the image quality coming from this system is still truly amazing, even when blown up to this size. Check my other reviews for the X1 information.
March 2004 updates
Over the last couple of days, my DAV-C770 has started exhibiting some weird behaviour. On some discs it skips violently like the machine is being shaken, on others, it refuses to read the menu system. On others, it plays but it seems to have become peculiarly sensitive to even the tiniest imperfection on the DVDs. Anything but a mirror-clean disc causes problems now. I tried contacting Sony and after 10 minutes on their automated response line talking to "Max" (their computer), they informed me the office was closed. I'll be trying again on monday.
May 2004 updated
Well there was a problem with the unit and in the end I managed to speak to a human being. I went through their fault-finding procedure and they concurred that I needed a repair. They gave me an RMA number and told me to ship it to them. Kudos to the UPS Store - they packed the unit well for me and charged me $27. That included packing materials, shipping and insurance - not bad for a 7kg delicate box. A few days later, the online Sony repair system showed that they had received my unit. A week after that, the message said "Your unit is with a technician awaiting repair." The week after that, it said "Your unit is being repaired" and on that friday, the message said "Your unit has been shipped back to you." In all it took about 2 working weeks between Sony receiving it and re-shipping it. The unit arrived back last night and it was extremely well packaged in foam packing peanuts. There was a slip of paper in with it detailing the repair. In my case, a replaced capacitor, lube and adjustment, and service of the "DBU ASSY." whatever that is. It was all under warranty so it cost me nothing. I put in the DVD which caused the most trouble before (the THX demo disc) and left it running for a couple of hours. All the places it skipped and stopped before the repair now play fine. I checked some more DVDs and they all seem to be working well too.
Two noteworthy changes :
1. the time it takes to recognise a DVD and start playing has dropped significantly. It used to be around 20 to 25 seconds. Now it's 8 seconds.
2. the player is much more tolerant of dirt and scratches on the DVD surface than it ever was.
This makes me wonder if there might have been a problem right from the outset on my unit.
For the review, I've taken one star away because it's the first Sony unit I've ever had go bad. But I added a star because the previously abyssmal DVD-read times have been slashed.
If the problem recurs, I'll post it in the review here.
I stumped up for one and took it home. Wiring this thing up is about as simple as you could want. All the plugs are colour-coded and there's ample wire to get to the back of my room. ( The room it's in is 12ft x 36ft ). I plumped for some speaker stands for the rear speakers - not Sony, but then I couldn't find any Sony ones I liked. The subwoofer is one the floor to the left of the TV, the centre speaker is on top of my satellite receiver and the left and right front speakers are naturally, to the left and right of my TV. (I'll get them further out when money allows 2 more speaker stands).
This box of tricks does Dolby Digital, Dolby Surround and DTS as it's three main sound modes. There's a bunch of fake surround modes for stereo sources, like CDs etc too. I popped Episode 1 into the player and skipped to the pod race. Good Lord! I could feel the deep revving of the engines. I could hear ambient sound all around! This was amazing! On to the race and the various effects from left to right and front to rear were crisply reproduced.
After an evening of going through just about every DVD I had, I concluded that this was the right system for me, in my circumstances. It's certainly not the most powerful system you'll ever see, but for an out-of-the-box system, it's bloody brilliant. The fact that it's designed as eye-candy doesn't hurt either. The swish little chrome and silver speakers look great. Movie music and ambient sounds come over brilliantly. The bass isn't particularly powerful, but it's enough to rattle the windows if you crank it up, and the sound itself isn't woolly or fuzzy. Regarding the comments in another review, my plastic cover on top of the woofer vibrates too. I put a couple of magazines on it and that cured it though. Still - it's a design oversight you'd think they'd have thought of.
The unit has a slot-loading 5-DVD changer. Changeover is a little slow, but it works well enough. It plays DVDs (duh), CDs, SA-CDs, and MP3 CD-R/CD-RWs. Sony give you a SA-CD sampler in the box and it's amazing to hear the difference between a surround-encoded music CD and a regular one. It's the old format wars though - will it be DVD-audio or SA-CD that wins? I could care less at the moment. I have an audio CD player for that.
One downside to an all-in-one system is futureproofing. ie. it isn't. With a component system, you can upgrade the DVD player and amp separately. With an all-in-one, you're making a commitment for a few years, to stick with one unit.
The DVD player is pretty good in this one though. It's a progressive-scan player, and compared to my 2-year-old Sony, the picture difference is quite staggering. I wouldn't have thought two years could make that much difference, but the image is better than my old player. Colours are better, noise is less and the blacks are actually black, not grey! The menu system is the same as most other Sony players I've seen. The remote, however, is designed more as an exercise in Ikea-esque form rather than function. The buttons are small, the text is even smaller, and the glow-in-the-dark back is a great novelty but completely useless in practical use.
This is a shame because the on-screen menus for setting up the DVD player could have been better. And once you're playing a movie, all your setup information appears on the screen on the front of the main unit. This requires good eyesight and a deft hand on the remote. This is about the only problem I've found so far. It's easier to stop the movie and mess about with the full-screen menus than it is to try and do it all on the little display on the front. With the fiddly little remote buttons, it's easy to bollocks-up your settings just using the on-unit display without really realising what you've done.
Speaking of setup, this system has the usual bells and whistles to set it up - test one to make sure you've got the speakers wired up right etc etc. You can adjust all the speaker spacings too. It's worth measuring the distance from your couch to the speakers rather than guessing. With this system, changing the system measurements does make a difference to the sound. There's a lot of flexibility for the placement of the rear speakers too. Their height can be in one of two zones, and their front-to-rear position can be in an arc about 75? off either ear. Ie. from beside you to almost right behind you. The manual is good at explaining these setup options and for anyone who isn't a complete buffoon, it won't take you more than a couple of minutes to get it right.
It's worth pointing out that if you're a power user of DVD and home cinema equipment, I suspect you'll be disappointed with this system. To my ears, in a 12ft x 36ft living room with a big TV, it sounds and looks the best I've ever had. To an audiophile or videophile who has equipment to tell them when something is wrong, I suspect you types will listen to this unit and turn your noses up in disgust. I'm sure you'd prefer valve amplifiers and 40cu ft. speaker housings. But for the rest of us, I think you could do far worse than get acquainted with this little system. It's unobtrusive but the sound and picture are great for the average person. I nitpick my sound and picture to a certain extent; everyone does. But this really is a spectacularly clever system for this price.
And therein lies the rub. You *always* get what you pay for. Here, for $450, you're getting a DVD player, amp and speakers. If you were to pay $450 just for an amp, of course it should sound better. And it will. But that's not the point. The point of this Sony unit is that it's a great way into the home cinema experience for most people, and for most of you, it will be more than enough.
June 5th update
Last night, for the first time, I hooked up my PS2 and Gamecube to the Sony system. For neither console, could the system auto-detect what surround mode was being used, but you can manually change the sound field using the remote. So I set it to Dolby Pro Logic II surround and it's transformed the way I play games. I spent most of last night casting demon spells in Eternal Darkness just to hear the booming echo that happens when you do. For my racing / driving games, you get a sense of the cars behind and to the sides of you without needing to use the mirrors so much. It's great. Since purchasing the system I've also re-watched almost every one of my DVDs and for those too, it's transformed the viewing experience.
September 16th update
The system has now been moved into my basement, into a light-controlled environment, and hooked up to my newly purchased InFocus X1 projector. Projected on to a white wall of my basement, the picture measures about 100 inches diagonal, and the image quality coming from this system is still truly amazing, even when blown up to this size. Check my other reviews for the X1 information.
March 2004 updates
Over the last couple of days, my DAV-C770 has started exhibiting some weird behaviour. On some discs it skips violently like the machine is being shaken, on others, it refuses to read the menu system. On others, it plays but it seems to have become peculiarly sensitive to even the tiniest imperfection on the DVDs. Anything but a mirror-clean disc causes problems now. I tried contacting Sony and after 10 minutes on their automated response line talking to "Max" (their computer), they informed me the office was closed. I'll be trying again on monday.
May 2004 updated
Well there was a problem with the unit and in the end I managed to speak to a human being. I went through their fault-finding procedure and they concurred that I needed a repair. They gave me an RMA number and told me to ship it to them. Kudos to the UPS Store - they packed the unit well for me and charged me $27. That included packing materials, shipping and insurance - not bad for a 7kg delicate box. A few days later, the online Sony repair system showed that they had received my unit. A week after that, the message said "Your unit is with a technician awaiting repair." The week after that, it said "Your unit is being repaired" and on that friday, the message said "Your unit has been shipped back to you." In all it took about 2 working weeks between Sony receiving it and re-shipping it. The unit arrived back last night and it was extremely well packaged in foam packing peanuts. There was a slip of paper in with it detailing the repair. In my case, a replaced capacitor, lube and adjustment, and service of the "DBU ASSY." whatever that is. It was all under warranty so it cost me nothing. I put in the DVD which caused the most trouble before (the THX demo disc) and left it running for a couple of hours. All the places it skipped and stopped before the repair now play fine. I checked some more DVDs and they all seem to be working well too.
Two noteworthy changes :
1. the time it takes to recognise a DVD and start playing has dropped significantly. It used to be around 20 to 25 seconds. Now it's 8 seconds.
2. the player is much more tolerant of dirt and scratches on the DVD surface than it ever was.
This makes me wonder if there might have been a problem right from the outset on my unit.
For the review, I've taken one star away because it's the first Sony unit I've ever had go bad. But I added a star because the previously abyssmal DVD-read times have been slashed.
If the problem recurs, I'll post it in the review here.
