I have one
I have had a Kenwood lower end receiver for almost three years. I recently went through a whole refit, if you will (RX-V2500, Mirage speakers, Velodyne sub)
I bought my Kenwood @ BB and I must say it has really done well and actually got good reviews from company while watching movies, etc.
I had to upgrade due to being out of component inputs on my TV and the Kenwood I had was without any component inputs. The exact model I have is a VR615 and it came with a passive sub and 5 satellites. I have to say for the $200.00 I paid for it at the time, it has performed far better than I ever expected. It in no way compares with the system I have now, but when you consider that I paid less for the whole system than I did for one of my satellites...... I think you get the picture.
The only real "Problem" with it was when watching movies with some really big bass hits you could hear the receiver giving up the ghost through the sub, I would get the very telling "Sub fart"
and the sub would cut out for a short second. This was caused because the power requirement to drive the sub, as well as the other speakers was more than the receiver could handle. This could have very easily been addressed by buying a powered sub. But hey it only happened 4 or 5 times in the long time I have had it.
I will tell you that it went straight into the bedroom with new speaker cable and there it will stay. I feel it is one of my better investments. I have made this statement many times in this forum "If you do not have any surround sound at all most any decent system will sound sooooooo much better than what you have" especially if all you have are just the TV speakers. It will be like night and day.
Kenwood does not really have a whole lot to offer in the upper end of the HT category, but if you are looking at the entry level, I say if you can get a good deal on one of their systems go for it, from experience I do not believe you will be disappointed with what you get. Mine makes a wonderful difference in my bedroom as well.
