Denon DHT-1513BA Pro Reviews

At $600, the Denon DHT-1513BA HTIB is a very good value. It’s easy to use and suitable for low to moderate volumes in a smallish room. If you have a big room to fill—and especially if you like your action movies, rock, or hip-hop loud—you may be better off investigating a more powerful receiver from Denon or another manufacturer as well as speakers that can handle more power. Likewise, if you want more than a stripped-down feature set, set your sights higher. But Denon has done a fine job of mating receiver and speakers in this pragmatically designed starter system. It pro- vides basic performance and basic features at a basic price.

What is key with the Denon DHT-1513BA is that you are getting a full fledged receiver (the Denon AVR-1513) along with a set of 5.1 speakers from Boston Acoustics. If this sounds more like a package deal than a HTiB, you are right. The AVR-1513 is on sale, separately, for $250. While the speaker system hasn't changed from previous DHT-1312BA, neither has the price. At $600, the DHT-1513BA has a lot going for it. While it is a bare-bones receiver, it has discrete amplification (75watts x 5), 3D pass-through, GUI over HDMI, and multiple HDMI inputs. That's more than you could expect from a lot of HTiB solutions. Add to that a nice "starter" set of speakers from Boston Acoustics, and you've got a no-brainer solution for those looking for a nice beginner setup.