videobruce said:
It appears that most seem to prefer using the receiver to switch inputs. This puzzles me to no end because;
1. Video is more important and whatever that could be done to reduce loss by either less cables or shorter cables and less switching (active or passage) would be a good thing.
2. Video has the far greater bandwidth (see above) so it makes sense to give it priority.
Video is more important to some people like those named
videobruce.
For others like myself audio is more important. The length of the cables and whether the video is switched by the TV or the receiver will have practically zero effect on the picture quality. Although many will argue for video straight to the tv on the theory that the shortest path is best, in practice the receiver has enough video switching bandwidth that it will not noticeably degrade the image at all.
3. Why send a signal to a device just to pass it along to another device when that device could 'switch' it also?
4. If the display device is designed properly, all you should need is one cable from the TV to the receiver to pass all and any audio.
Sending everything to TV and then
back to the receiver is the same thing - passing it along to another device. IIRC you want to use HDMI, which in most cases will carry the audio too (doesn't work properly with all devices especially cable boxes) so in that case you could send the audio to the TV and have the TV send it back to the receiver, but doing so is the same argument you are using about passing video to a device only to pass it along to another device, just that now we're talking about audio instead of video.
What you may be overlooking though is that there are still analog devices that you may be using. 'Digital cable', at least where I live, still has many channels with analog audio only. If your cable box can convert those analog channels to digital and pass it over HDMI to the TV and the TV can then send it back to the receiver that would be ok; if it doesn't then you'd have to run analog audio straight to the receiver anyway because the TV will NOT convert analog to digital and send it out its digital output.
Note also that if you send any digital signal to the TV and it alters that signal in ANY WAY, the receiver may not be able to identify the type of signal and engage the proper decoder. If you send the TV DD, will it be able to pass the untouched bitstream back to the receiver or will it only output PCM? If it only outputs PCM, you'd have the TV doing the DD decoding - a job for which the receiver is far better suited - AND the receiver will now have only a 2 channel PCM signal and will have to use a matrix decoder to turn it into surround. Bye-bye Dolby Digital.
Example; a combination of composite, S-Video, component and HDMI video sources would require more than one set of cables to the TV if the receiver doesn't up convert all of them to HDMI. You would have to switch inputs with the receiver, AND switch inputs with the TV. Where is the advantage?? You are doing double duty, aren't you?
True and that is why you have to decide what you need before you buy a receiver. Using that example though say you do have a component that only outputs composite, s or component video. That component will have to be connected to a different input on the TV as well as a different input on the receiver and you are right back to switching the TV and receiver independently.
Using the receiver as the central switch is far more convenient than running separate cables to the receiver. If the receiver can transcode from one format to another, then the receiver will switch audio and video at the same time. If it cannot transcode then you have to switch both the receiver and TV - the same as if you run everything to the TV.
It's your call.
