AV Receiver Reviews

Setup & Tests
My HDMI sources include a TiVo Series 3, an Oppo DV-983H DVD player, a Panasonic DMP-BD30 Blu-ray player, and a Pioneer Elite BDP-05FD Blu-ray player. I also connected my Xbox 360 and BD30 via component to see how well the AVR deinterlaced 1080i signals to 1080p. However, I didn't need to go through the effort since all HD signals, whether component or HDMI, pass through the AVR with no processing.

I discovered this when I attempted to test the AVR's ability to deinterlace 1080i component signals from the Panasonic BD30 and even a Toshiba HD-A35 HD DVD player. With the AVR's output resolution set to 1080p or Auto, the output signal was still 1080i. Component signals at 480i were deinterlaced and upconverted to 1080p without a hitch, but an AVR in this price class should be able to convert all analog sources to 1080p, not just standard definition.

The video upscaling in the SC-05 actually surpassed the results from the flagship SC-09TX with test patterns. I tested the deinterlacing performance with the HQV Benchmark DVD at 480i via component from the BD30. Both jaggies tests were acceptable, with jaggies showing up in the yellow area on the single rotating bar and the lowest bar in the three-bar test. The waving-flag test looked great with few jaggies, but the bricks in the background looked on the soft side and noisy. The film-detail race-car sequence had some very slight moiré and took a split second to lock onto the signal, but mixed 3:2 content with horizontal and vertical scrolling video passed with flying colors—an area where the SC-09TX stumbled badly.

Watching the opening sequence of Star Trek: Insurrection didn't reveal any jaggies on the rooftops or bridges in this challenging scene, and the coliseum flyover in Gladiator looked just as good, which matched the results I got on the SC-09TX.

Pioneer has chosen a "do no harm" philosophy with HDMI signals in all of its Elite AVRs, which bypasses any video processing on the HDMI inputs. While some may not agree with this decision, at least the HDMI inputs show no adverse affects from passing through the AVR—which is something that not all such devices can claim. Below-black and above-white information isn't clipped, and depending on your other equipment, HDMI processing may well be redundant.

As with the SC-09TX, I wasn't satisfied with the out-of-the-box audio performance of the SC-05 due to my acoustically challenged room. Using the supplied microphone, I utilized the Expert MCACC program, which provides some customizable options and measures up to three seating positions—the Basic program measures only one—which is particularly helpful when calibrating for a flat frequency response.

After completion, three separate correction curves are stored in memory—Symmetry (default) flattens the frequency response of the front right and left channels, All Channel Adjust flattens all channels, and Front Align sets all speakers in accordance with the front-speaker measurements. I found the Symmetry setting to be the most pleasing, which is what I preferred on the SC-09TX as well.