Take one sagging economy, add in advancing technology, bake them with some economies of scale and serve up to consumers hungry for this newfangled digital, HD AV craze -- it's a winning formula. When it comes to AV receivers, however, the pool is so crowded that picking a winner in the entry level category (remember that sagging economy) is daunting enough to push people to HTIB simplicity. The truth is that there's no single "best" entry-level receiver, but
Audioholics has gone through the trouble of putting appropriate models from
Denon,
Yamaha, Harman Kardon,
Onkyo and
Pioneer into a feature comparison grid. The answer that emerges on which receiver is the "best" is a definite "it depends" -- you basically get to pick two out of three: audio features, video features and price. So the bad news is, you've got some choices to make; the good news is, you've got some choices to make.
posted Jul 23rd 2009 11:53PM
Good 'overview', but why not at least a basic review? I am assuming they just downloaded the manuals and did a 'paper lab' (remember those for people who went to under-funded high schools?) - not what I would have expected from one of the most trusted HT sites!
Very useful, I'd like to see the same at maybe a $500 price point.
No mention of sound quality or SNR.
at the $500 price point...
I got a AVR 354 for right around $500 from an authorized HK dealer online. (and that was a few months back... may be cheaper now)
I have been very satisfied with it.
This isn't much of a review, just a short comparison. No mention of sound quality. I'd rather see a more in depth coverage of $5-600 or so.
So I often wondered is it better to get an AV receiver with multiple HDMI ports and have one HDMI port to an HDTV, or to get a HDTV with multiple HDMI ports and have the audio connected to a receiver.
Or put it another way, which will be worse: the degradation of video if the cabling goes through the AV receiver first, or the degradation of audio if the cabling goes through the HDTV first?
I have Tivo Series3, Bluray player, and an XBox 360, and an HDTV with only one HDMI input port. Only the Bluray is hooked up the HDMI, the others through component cabling. Should I upgrade my AV receiver, or upgrade my HDTV?
With HDMI it probably doesn't matter that much. Either the signal gets to the other end or it doesn't. There isn't a whole lot of degradation of digital signals unless you have VERY long runs or really crappy connections.
Don't most of those devices have digital audio out also? I feed HDMI from my Blu-Ray player and FiOS box to the TV and feed the digital audio from both to the receiver. That way I get HD video and surround audio.
Use receiver for managing multiple sources not TV. Main reason is audio. TV does not pass audio unmodified. With hdmi you won't lose video quality because it is not analog
Are you really worried about the digital signal passing through two devices degrading the quality of the signal. Because that shouldn't be a problem. Or are you worried about one device processing the signal poorly and passing it on to the other in something besides the original format? In that case, you should be able to turn off any reprocessing of the signal. Otherwise, just go HDMI to the TV, and digital audio to the receiver. Use a universal remote to make sure the outputs are always in sync.
Peter - by connecting your bluray player directly to the TV and then connecting optical from TV to the receiver, you are not getting true surround sound nor are you getting the new lossless codecs from bluray disks.
You will have to connect the HDMI cable from bluray player directly to a compatible receiver to get true surround sound and lossless sound.
siva - That's not what I'm doing. I'm feeding the video from the player to the TV with an HDMI cable, and feeding the audio directly from the player to the receiver with a digital audio cable. My receiver is too old to have HDMI inputs but it can decode DTS so I do get full surround.
The same thing works perfectly from my FiOS box too. That is what I was suggesting the OP try since he only has 1 HDMI port on his TV.
At Peter,
Your NOT getting true surround sound setup like you are. I tried it myself, it doesn't work. Because of the DRM(Digital rights Management) of HDMI, the BEST Audio your going to get out of your Toslink Audio Out port from your HDTV is Dolby Pro Logic II from whatever hardware is connected by HDMI. That's it! That's NOT true surround sound which would be Dolby Digital or DTS. You ONLY get true Surround sound out of the HDTV's Optical(TOSLINK) port is when your using the HDTV's built in tuner to pick up HD channels with your Antenna!!! That's it, and that's why it's there!!! I tried it on my Panasonic Plasma and Pioneer Elite Receiver. I saw the results on the display and then found out why that was and had to switch back to how I used to have everything connected. I was short a Optical port so I tried the HDTV way and learned the truth in the matter. DRM strikes again!!!
You NEED to connect from the Blu-Ray player directly to your Surround sound Receiver for your Audio connection, and you can leave the Video as it is. If you don't have enough Optical ports on your receiver, you can buy Optical Switches to give you more ports. They're not expensive.
If you get a Receiver with a built in HDMI switch in it like I later did with the Onkyo 806 I got, then it's HDMI directly to the receiver from your devices and then receiver to HDTV. Since mine is the higher end, the HDMI connections are passed though and the SVIDEO and others are converted to HDMI also, so my 4 HDMI connected devices and my Old TIVO using SVideo is all going to my HDTV with a single HDMI cable. You also get the better HD Audio on Blu-Ray and HD DVD using HDMI up to 7.1 currently, from Toslink limited 5.1.
A SQ review is a complete waste of time. In order to acheive a SQ that would satisfy most buyers, you would have to put the high quality parts in the receiver. Once that happens, the price jumps to over 2K. At the entry level, it boils down to appearance.
And Marantz? Why do the comparisons always exclude them?
Because Marantz does not make entry level gear. This is a review of entry level gear.
I bought an entry level HK receiver last year and loved the sound quality but the HDMI switching never worked right so I took it back.
The first problem was with the HDCP handshake. If I turned the TV on and not the receiver the handshake from my HD cable box would not happen. Sometimes I just want to use the passthrough and not use the receiver to process anything. In order for the handshake to work I needed to turn the reciever on first.
The second problem was that if I just wanted to use the TV speakers it would never work becuase the TV could not process a 5.1 signal through HDMI. It could only take a 2.1 singal through HDMI and there is no point in setting the output of my Bluray player to 2.1 and run it through a 5.1 receiver.
The only other way to get sound to both and still have HDMI for the picture would be to use optical or coax and then I would lose the uncompressed audio because the player would only send that through HDMI.
Some of the problems were with ym TV but it would be stupid to change a $1500 TV to get HDMI to work right on a $299 receiver.
HDMI is really worthless as a way to simplify connections. It was supposed to give you one cable for everything but you almost always need to use two cables anyway. Then you had the problem of most entry level gear not processing audio through HDMI, so what is the point of using the receiver to handle video.
At Iridum,
Your problem is you got a low end budget Receiver and expected MORE out of it!!!! The Second problem is HDMI has DRM that Limits the HDTV's Optical port output to max Dolby Pro Logic II. Which is FAKE surround sound.
I'm using a Panasonic TH-50PZ85u 50" Plasma and a Onkyo 806 Receiver which has 5 HDMI inputs. I have a Panasonic BD-35 Blu-Ray player connected by HDMI bitstreaming the audio to the receiver, I have a Toshiba HD-A35 HD DVD player connected by HDMI also bitstreaming the Audio. I have my Xbox 360 connected by HDMI, and my Comcast HD Dual Tuner DVR cable box connected by HDMI. Plus a OLD Philip's TIVO connected by S-Video. It all goes out by a single HDMI cable to my HDTV. I guess you could say 2 cables, the HDMI cable and the POWER cable. All controlled by my Harmony 1000 remote and using the RF Module. ZERO HDCP handshake problems.
The Video is all Passthouh if it's HDMI and Up-converted to 1080P for my 480i sources and out though HDMI also. I get all the Audio formats and displayed right on the receiver for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio and all the others. Works great, sounds great and I got rid of a bunch of cable clutter.
My HDTV's speakers have NEVER been used. They are turned OFF just like my old HDTV. Why would you want to use them? This is what your Receiver and it's speakers are for. You know what? You generally get what you pay for!!! If you'd spent a couple hundred more, you'd have been better off. I got my Receiver at a pretty good price at the time, but it was still a lot of money, but I knew what features I wanted and needed, and I looked at the HK and read about some HDMI problems and lacking features I wanted. I'm really happy with what I got even though some others have had some other types of problems. HDMI when it's working, works great, and like I said above, No problems at all for myself.
I really want the Sony STR-DA2400ES myself, thing is awesome. I used to purchase only Pioneer, but I like the idea of the XMB visual GUI on the newer Sony receivers.
I have that Yamaha receiver its pretty awesome for $230. I have my 360 and hd cable box plugged into the hdmi inputs for video and I have optical cables plugged in for audio then I got another hdmi running back to the hdtv. This is the only way to get real Dolby Digital 5.1 out of that receiver since it wont do better then Pro Logic II if you run the audio cable from a tv to the receiver and have everything plugged into the tv. Every thing sounds really good with the speakers I kept from my Panasonic home theatre in a box.