Sony Giga Juke NASE300HKITFI.YG Music Systems with 80GB HDD

It looks good, it sounds good and it really does revolutionise how you listen to your music collection. Excellent value for money and the service from Amazon was great as usual.
The Cd works fine, the radio is good - no problem with DAB except you do have to use the aerial.

So, what's not perfect:
It takes ages to transfer your CDs onto the system
The way it stores them means that you end up with lots of folders for the same artist (Elvis Costello, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, Elvis Costello And The Attractions etc etc) Although you can rename the folders, you can't use a name thats already in use
You can't search for songs, only for artists and when you search for artists they are nearly all under T (The Beatles, The Kinks, The Horrors etc etc)

Overall, though, a good product that would have been almost perfect if they had paid more attention to the software

I really, REALLY wanted to give this the full 5-stars..
but there are just too many minor niggles that get in the way.

Let me start with the good..
Having looked high and low for some sort of HDD hifi to put all my CDs on and finding nothing doing, I was beginning to think that I may have to make do with connecting my walkman to the back of my old hifi..
Then I spotted this system, at £250 or so, it wasn't cheap, but it certainly had the features I was looking for.

I have to say, the system looks great, but in a somewhat understated way.
It would probably sit in a corner of your room without attracting too much attention to itself.. no flashing lights or bright LED displays.
I'm pleased with the look of the unit, I'm a sucker for anything black and this has a very nice shiny black finish.. great to look at, but a real sod to keep dust free.

The sound is great. I find it powerful, clear and rich.
I notice that some reviewers bemoan the fact that there is no preset, multi band equaliser or surround sound function.
In all honesty, I've had my fair share of Hifi systems with equalisers and have found most of them to be terrible and not up to the job.. and don't get me started on 'surround sound' effects!
What you do get with this system, is simple bass & treble controls (range: -4 to +4), these are adequate, but I still think a mid-range EQ band would have been helpful.
Certain mp3 albums that I have, seem to be lacking in this range.

The remote is a little complicated at first, but you soon get the knack of which button does what.

The system has more inputs than you can shake a stick at, including USB, DMport, line-in and a slot for your walkman (which can be either for playing music from the walkman or transferring music to/from)
Most of my CDs were put into the system via a USB stick.
As I had already put my CD collection on my PC, it was easier to transfer them this way.
It should be noted that the system will record directly from CD to HDD, but only at 128kbps, however, the system will accept MP3s of up to 320kbps.(WMA is max 192kbps and AAC is max 320kbps)
Most of my CD collection is recorded at 192kbps, so I was able to transfer to the system without any problems.
Do be warned though, transferring does take a while and is probably best done while your busy doing other things.

The DAB radio is superb.
You only get a cheap, single-wire style aerial, but I found that it gives me excellent reception.. no interference or 'dropping' of the signal.
If you live in an area where DAB reception is iffy, then obviously a better aerial is required, but it'll be worth it.
The unit can record directly from CD, also you can record from DAB broadcasts.. which is handy if you aren't going to be in, when a favourite radio programme is on.

Now the bad points:
I say 'bad' but they are more like minor annoyances.

Such as:
Sony's reluctance to use M3u playlist files.
You can set up a pre-programmed list of 25 songs.. (25? why not something like 250 or 500?)
If you're having guests round and you want a constant selection of background music, you may find yourself having to keep going back and forth creating new playlists and changing CDs/albums
You can have the unit play tracks randomly, but this won't allow you any control over which songs are played.

Perhaps some method of setting up playlists on a PC and transferring them to the system would be helpful - trying to do this on the system itself, would probably be a headache anyway.

The screen is easy enough to see and read, but only if you are not at a distance or wide angle - then it becomes quite an eye-strain.
I don't know who came up with the black writing on a white screen, but it isn't the best combo for distance viewing. I would have preferred the more conventional LED-on-black type of display.

Also, the method of searching and scroling through artists is a little tiresome.. why couldn't they have had a folder-hierachy (aka windows) type of display.. less hassle and easier.

The Bass & treble can only be adjusted from the remote control - bit of a nuisance if you happen to mislay the control and need to make an adjustment.

You can't alter the mode of play while you are actually playing music - ie, if you decide that you want to listen to a particular album, but have the tracks shuffled, you rather annoyingly have to stop the music and go through the 'options' menu to change the mode of play.

A couple of aesthetic points about the unit..
Having the screen jutting out on top of the unit, looks a bit odd in my opinion.
Surely, if Sony had intergrated the screen into the front fascia and perhaps had the CD tray on top, but flush with the top of the unit, this would have given the unit a nicer compact look and would have allowed them to put a wider display screen on it.

The problem with it now, is, I find when searching for a particular album, out of several from the same artist, I have to wait for the artist name to start scrolling, so that I can then choose the correct album (as all my albums are listed by artist then album)

If Sony would address these minor problems then this would be a truly fantastic system.. not just a very good one.

Despite these problems, I am delighted with the system.. it looks and sounds great.

I can now finally sell my CD collection.. CDs are so 20th century!

I bought this for my husband who is utterly computer illiterate and wouldn't even use my ipod because it entailed downloading from a computer. The Giga Juke instructions are simple and easy to understand and he had no trouble in impementing them and operating the system. He has downloaded his whole cd collection which are is now in the loft.It also has the ability to download from a walkman or an ipod.
It incorporates a DAB radio, although reception was poor in our area but but for very little money he has erected a dab ariel on the roof and is now delighted. The unit proved to be easy to record to and he liked it that he could very simply leave out those odd tracks that he wished weren't on an album. The hardrive delivers an led readout to see who is performing and the name of the track which is being performed.
He puts it on shuffle and is delighted with the whole system and it's performance. The sound quality is tremendous from this great little system and is reasonably priced.