All the bells and whistles

Reading the features list on modern receivers is like some sort of Tolstoy-esque torrent of acronyms and abbreviations.

This is a good thing, believe it or not, at least when it's all implemented correctly. Denon has a strong history at being able to get it all to work together, so we take a look at their AVR-4810CI to run it through its paces.

Also: Kitchen Sink

As you'd expect, the AVR-4810CI decodes all the latest audio formats. Each of the receiver's nine channels puts out 140 watts. For front height channels, there is Dolby ProLogic IIz processing and Audyssey's DSX (which adds the possibility of width channels as well). Audyssey's MultEQ XT 8-point room correction processing is also inside. All incoming video signals, regardless of resolution or input, can be upconverted/transcoded to HDMI and 1080p. Anchor Bay's VRS does all the video processing. Ethernet connectivity allows for Internet radio and access to media files on your home network.

On the hardware side you get 24-bit/129-kHz Burr-Brown PCM-1804 and PCM-1791 DACs. Denon claims a THD of 0.05 for all channels. I could list all the inputs, but that would be boring and there's a picture below that will do it faster.

Turn it up

Well, the remote doesn't work. That was my first experience with the AVR-4810CI. After plugging in all my sources, all the speakers, and firing it up, the fancy remote with the funky screen did little to engage the receiver.

Fortunately (oddly?) there is a second, more basic, remote that worked just fine. This made me open the manual, which if I have to do within the first hour of using a product, I'm generally in a pretty sour mood.

The onscreen GUI (Graphical User Interface) is excellent, and "borrows" heavily from Sony's PlayStation Xross Media Bar GUI. If you remember the horrid DOS style onscreen menus of yore, this is a welcome change.

Hooking up to the Internet is a fairly new feature in receivers, and it works here much as it does on other products. You can use an Ethernet cable, or attach the included antenna and even access your LAN wirelessly. Once it acknowledged my network, it sensed there was an update to download. This took about 15 minutes and required no effort on my end.

Webby

In addition to Internet radio stations, the AVR-4810CI will play music directly from computers on your LAN. This may take some setup on your computer's side (which is true any time you want to share music over your LAN), but of course is worth it in the end.

While there is a USB input on the front and the back, only one is usable at a time. The front is the default, so if you want to enable the one on the rear panel, you need to do so in the menu. This isn't just for iPods, the AVR-4810CI will also play music or show images from flash drives.

Wherever you get the music files from, onscreen you'll see all the metadata along with the cover art. Getting music from PCs on your network isn't instant, so if you're on random there is a few second between tracks. Not a big deal, but worth mentioning so you don't think your new receiver is bugging out. You get bit rate data for each track, though, something you don't get when reading off an iPod.

Turns out my problem with the remote was a PEBKAC error. The "Main" button on the touchable screen also scrolls through the different zones. So if you don't notice you've hit the button one too many times, as far as the remote is concerned you're trying to adjust a different zone. Sometimes you've just got to RTFM.

Sounds

Sound quality is great. Overall the sound is warm. The DACs do an excellent job at creating a clean sound that is never abrasive. Well, unless the original material is abrasive, in that case, it's as abrasive as you'd want. At 140 watts per channel, there is plenty of power to play plenty loud.

Audyssey, however, throws out any meaningful description of the receiver's sound quality. Taking measurements at 8 points around your theater, the MultEQ records what your speakers are doing in your room, and creates an EQ that evens out the sound.

This will make every system sound better, regardless of room, speakers or whathaveyou. It's not a material, though. A good room with good speakers will still sound better than a crappy room with crappy speakers, regardless of MultEQ. It does, however, improve the sound quality.

Overall the process took only a few minutes. After placing the included microphone on a tripod to get it to ear level, the AVR-4810CI cycled through each speaker in my room with a "whap whap whap" sound. Then I moved the mic, per the onscreen instructions, to two other positions. You can have up to eight, but my room doesn't have that many seats.

In my decent room with some decent speakers, the improvement was most noticeable in the bass. The bass was tighter and more accurate. The overall sound more neutral. How it sounds better will depend on your room, but unless you've got an acoustically engineered room, it's likely it will have some sort of improvement. From the remote you can toggle the EQ on and off, so you can A/B the result.

Vids

Video performance is quite good. With the rotating bar and waving flag tests off the HQV Test DVD, there were only slight jagged edges. The 3:2 sequence is picked up with both 480i and 1080i content. As you'd hope, the AVR-4810CI passes a 1080p/24 signal and a 1-pixel on/off pattern. There is even a mode to stretch 2.35:1 content vertically so you can add an anamorphic lens to a projector that doesn't have that kind of mode built in.

Everything

Like most modern receivers the Denon AVR-4810CI has more features than most people would know what to do with. What separates this one from the back is how many of those features are actually useful (those listed in this review), and how they are comparatively easy to access and use. No receiver on the market can give Apple a run for its user friendly money, but how close they come is often much of the differentiator between brands/models. Add to that a natively solid sounding audio stage, and you have an excellent overall package.

PRICE:
AVR-4810CI: $2,999

CONTACT: Denon.com