Guide to help understand Old AVR's features by age

What age is your primary Receiver?


  • Total voters
    10
L

Latent

Full Audioholic
When looking at older Receiver models it can be hard to work out what it will support and also what you will get by moving to a newer Receiver. Below is a list of the main features that have been added and the approximate year they were released.

2015 HDCP 2.2
New protection scheme needed for future Blu-Ray UHD/4k support
2015 DTS-X Similar to Atmos. Avaiblable in high end 2015 Recivers but not usable without 2016 f/w update
2014 Dolby Atmos Adds overhead source audio and speaker placment. Up-converts existing Dolby tracks
2014 HDMI 2.0 Support for higher bandwidth allowing 4k/60p
2013 MHL Allows the connection of certain Mobile devices to an HDMI input and powers the device as well
2012 Mobile App iOS/Android remote control apps make controlling your device easier
2011 Airplay allows iOS devices to stream audio over wifi to the Receiver
2010 HDMI 1.4a Support to pass 3D signals, 4k/30p and return Audio from a TV via ARC.
2009 DLNA Networking standard on many devices and ability to stream content and other services
2008 HDMI 1.3a Ability to pass Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD bitstreams over HDMI
2007 HDMI 1.2a Ability to pass Super Audio CD (DSD) over HDMI
2006 HDMI 1.1 Ability to pass DVD-Audio over HDMI
2004 HDMI 1.0 2-8 channel LPCM 192/24 audio only. Sources may convert newer formats to this.
Pre-2004 SPDIF/6ch-analog Earlier receivers can accept Dolby Digital and DTS over SPDIF or 6 channel analog inputs.

So for example if you are looking at a AVR released in 2010 it will probably support all the features listed from 2010-2004 and be missing anything from 2011-2015.

Please note that different Manufacturers and different price points may have some of these features earlier or later than listed above as this is just a rough guide.
 
KenM10759

KenM10759

Audioholic Samurai
LOL...my receiver is a 2015 date but has the 2010 feature level.
 
Last edited:
F

fmw

Audioholic Ninja
I have a 2015 model AV receiver that I bought mostly to be able to stream music from my local area network. As it turns out, it can't navigate my network. Otherwise, it does nothing meaningful that my 2004 model AV receiver did. It has whiz bang 2.2, Atmos and a host of other things that I really don't care about. It turned out to be a waste of money. Every year there are new codecs. Frankly most of them are worth ignoring.
 
L

Latent

Full Audioholic
I have a 2015 model AV receiver that I bought mostly to be able to stream music from my local area network. As it turns out, it can't navigate my network. Otherwise, it does nothing meaningful that my 2004 model AV receiver did. It has whiz bang 2.2, Atmos and a host of other things that I really don't care about. It turned out to be a waste of money. Every year there are new codecs. Frankly most of them are worth ignoring.
Yeah I've thought about upgrading my AVR to one with Networking to try it out but not sure if it is worth the money. Hopefully they can make these networking features easier to use over time like Yamaha's attempt to bring back MusicCast. If the networking and atmos etc are no use to you then about all you are getting is simpler HDMI switching if you want to add multiple HDMI source devices.

Also everyone please let me know if there are any major mistakes in my list above or anything that should be added. There are some things I've excluded like Wifi, Bluetooth and Room Correction because the year they were adopted by different brands has a lot of variability. Bluetooth and Wifi started out as optional addons with plug in dongles etc before being built in standard on some of the newer units. And room correction has many versions and upgrades/changes over time.
 
L

Latent

Full Audioholic
LOL...my receiver is a 2105 date but has the 2010 feature level.
Lucky for you most people get by just fine with 2010 era technology :)

But it is a pity that even units released 90 years in the future are still not supporting these newer features!
 
Seth=L

Seth=L

Audioholic Overlord
LOL...my receiver is a 2105 date but has the 2010 feature level.
That's NAD for you. :)

@Latent

It's interesting to see what features were added in which years. Did you put this together yourself or was this something you found (copy pasted). If you put it together yourself I'm impressed.
 
L

Latent

Full Audioholic
It's interesting to see what features were added in which years. Did you put this together yourself or was this something you found (copy pasted). If you put it together yourself I'm impressed.
Yeah I was curious about this so went googling but no luck finding this info easily. Bound to be someone who has put this together before but maybe my google foo is not good enough. So spent about 1.5 hours going though old articles and product specs to find approximate timings. The old Alcoholics receiver reviews were quite handy for this.
 

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