1 Box Please

As long as product functionality is not compromised, I'm all for convergence and a single item to do it all. Crappy cameras in cell phones, bad. High quality DVD players in home theater receivers, good, in certain uses.

I bring that up because we got a new AV setup for our living room. We were looking to free up some space in the room and getting rid of a massive component stack and big floor standing speakers was a great way to do that.



The box of choice is the Denon S-301. You can read my full review of it over on sadida.com. I even slicked it up a bit with pictures and a video (ooooo, a video). We're quite happy with it so far. It's been everything we wanted and the performance is top notch.

Another interesting thing I found is that Denon is running a blog for the S-301 and its little brother, the S-101. This isn't the first time a product has gotten its own blog. The iPod has dozens, but they aren't official ones. For offical products, I'm aware of myxda.com, but it is still refreshing to see companies connecting with their customers and bringing the post-sale details right to them. Too bad that I, a customer, had to find the site during searching while writing my review. I don't know how "regular" customers would find it.

I have been impressed with Denon lately. Not only are they doing this receiver blog, but their engineers and test teams frequent a few of the Denon DJ boards. Being a tech guy myself, I like it when I get straight technical answers that I can trust.