Is a receiver still the way to go?

[lancer360]

Looking to pull the trigger and update my HT. It is the only tv in the house so we use it for cable tv, games, and movies. I'm keeping my DIY speakers, but plan on replacing the Panasonic PT-AE3000 projector and possibly the receiver (Yamaha HTR-5990). Since I'm looking at projectors (Epson 5040 or Optoma UHD65) that will handle 4K content is a new receiver the best way to go or could I keep the receiver and use a separate video switcher device to change video sources and leave the audio running thru my current receiver? Also what are the odds of a 4k signal surviving the trip over a 50' BJC Series 1 HDMI cable?

 

[WaynePflughaupt]

You can certainly keep the old receiver, if you don’t mind the extra trouble of switching the video separate from the audio.

Is your current projector connected via HDMI? If so you won’t have any problems with 4K.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[lancer360]

Currently, receiver is doing the video switching and sending the hd signal thru the 50' BJC Series 1 HDMI cable. Currently control is a logitech universal remote which does it all with one click, but you bring up a good point. I believe it only supports two ir repeaters, one on the reciever and one on the cable box. If I had another ir device I might not be able to control it. All my equipment is rack mounted so it isn"t really practical to get a repeater far enough in front of the equipment that one repeater would have line of site to two devices. A new receiver might be the only think that works and keeps my universal remote working. My wife isn't very tech savy so having an array of remotes or having to open up the rack and manually switch devices isn't really an option.

 

[bommai]

Looking to pull the trigger and update my HT. It is the only tv in the house so we use it for cable tv, games, and movies. I'm keeping my DIY speakers, but plan on replacing the Panasonic PT-AE3000 projector and possibly the receiver (Yamaha HTR-5990). Since I'm looking at projectors (Epson 5040 or Optoma UHD65) that will handle 4K content is a new receiver the best way to go or could I keep the receiver and use a separate video switcher device to change video sources and leave the audio running thru my current receiver? Also what are the odds of a 4k signal surviving the trip over a 50' BJC Series 1 HDMI cable?

50' might be a problem. Do some research on the 4K certified cables. I had 25' cables running through the walls. I upgraded from epson 1080ub to the 5040UB and also bought a uhd player. While the 7+ year old hdmi cable worked, it would cutout once in a while briefly. Bought a different 25' cable from amazon that said 4K capable and it has been working great.

50' might be a bigger challenge.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[yepimonfire]

I've had good results with the Amazon basics cables, the 25' one has given me no problems. Its huge though, and I can only imagine how big around a 50' one would have to be.

Sent from my 5065N using Tapatalk

 

[rojo]

If it's BJC, I have high confidence that 4K shouldn't be a problem. They're satisfyingly over-engineered. This bench test indicates a passing grade at 30 feet for 1080p 12-bit color (see the last paragraph), which was the strongest test available at the time. Fast forward nearly a decade later, and 8-bit and 10-bit color depth are still the standard. I'm pretty sure your HDMI cable has sufficient bandwidth to handle 4K.

If you do find you need to replace it when you get a 4K capable display, then get a Redmere cable from Monoprice. Even the 100' length version of this cable will do 4K@60fps (or so Monoprice claims). Or get this one for a little more future proofing.

 

[lancer360]

I'm really hoping I don't have to replace the cable as I'll have to cut open the wall to get to it. I'm leaning towards keeping my existing receiver and using this powered HDMI switcher instead of buying a new receiver that will handle the 4k@60fps HSMI switching. $45 for a switcher is cheap compared to a new receiver. Is there anything else I am overlooking that would make a new receiver worth while? I'm not planning on upgrading my speakers from my existing 7.1 setup at this time.

 

[lovinthehd]

FWIW at a glance it doesn't seem to have decoding for Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD MA (or Atmos or other immersive audio codecs), don't know if that's important to you....

 

[lancer360]

Atmos would require additional speakers and the drivers in my speakers have been out of production for some time so making new speakers that match would be difficult. Is the TrueHD etc. a huge leap forward in sound quality over the Dolby Digital/DTS-ES that I currently have or is it just a smaller increment?

 

[lovinthehd]

Atmos would require additional speakers and the drivers in my speakers have been out of production for some time so making new speakers that match would be difficult. Is the TrueHD etc. a huge leap forward in sound quality over the Dolby Digital/DTS-ES that I currently have or is it just a smaller increment?

Well, it's a lossless thing but compared to the lossy codecs I think you can be quite happy without Not a huge leap...but it is nice to get everything!

 

[lancer360]

Yea, but $45 for a nice powered HDMI switch vs. $1000 for a new receiver is hard to justify when the receiver I have no complaints about the sound that I currently have. I am by no means a hard core audiophile.

 

[lovinthehd]

Yea, but $45 for a nice powered HDMI switch vs. $1000 for a new receiver is hard to justify when the receiver I have no complaints about the sound that I currently have. I am by no means a hard core audiophile.

Only you can be the judge of what that value the higher resolution may be worth to you....

 

[rojo]

How far away do you sit from your screen, and how large is your screen? Do you enable the smooth motion / soap opera effect feature on your current projector?

 

[yepimonfire]

Atmos would require additional speakers and the drivers in my speakers have been out of production for some time so making new speakers that match would be difficult. Is the TrueHD etc. a huge leap forward in sound quality over the Dolby Digital/DTS-ES that I currently have or is it just a smaller increment?

I can't reliably pass a blind test when comparing regular Dolby digital or DTS at 640kbps and 1500kbps to lossless, and most of the time I can't even pass at the DVD standard of 448kbps when actual movie content is involved. Multichannel compression is much more efficient than stereo since there are multiple channels to "borrow" bits from. Unless you want discrete 7.1 I'd say no.

I'll also say the new Dolby surround matrix upmixer is a massive improvement to Prologic II, even with a 5.1 setup, it's nearly as good as discrete surround, so if you're big into upmixing music or stereo content I'd say a new receiver is worth it just for that.

Also, heights don't have to be 100% timbre matched, I've found so long as there aren't major differences in tonality, (for example, you wouldn't want bright floor level speakers and heights with subdued highs) anything will work well. Being that you're big into diy you could easily design speakers to have wide dispersion characteristics necessary for facing the speakers down and getting good coverage across the seating area.

Atmos is the largest improvement to multichannel sound since discrete 5.1 and really is worth the upgrade. You may not be interested in it, but I guarantee if you ever get to hear a proper atmos setup you'd instantly change your mind. It's less about just having cool aircraft flyover effects and more about having a believable three dimensional sound bubble that gives "space" to the soundstage. It's like going from stereo to surround, no matter how good a stereo mix is its very two dimensional and can't accurately reproduce a 3D soundstage.

Even with legacy mixes, both Dolby surround and DTS: Neural X (the latter seems to work best with multichannel content) do an amazing job figuring out what to remap to the heights.

Sent from my 5065N using Tapatalk

 

[lancer360]

How far away do you sit from your screen, and how large is your screen? Do you enable the smooth motion / soap opera effect feature on your current projector?

I have a 126" 16:9 screen and seating is about 12-14' from the screen. My Panasonic has two modes of frame interpolation. I have it set on the lesser of the two.

 

[lancer360]

I'm trying to resist the urge to get the $4K JVC DLA-x570r projector that I can get now and wait on the 2-6 week backordered Optoma UHD65 for $2.5K $1500 bucks would get me a reasonable Atmos receiver. This would require me to cut the wall back open to run the additional speaker wire. I currently have a 50ft Beldon Series 1 HDMI cable from Blue Jeans that I give a 50/50 shot carrying the 4k HDR signal. If it doesn't then I have to cut open the wall anyway and pull some more Cat6 for HDMI over ethernet. It would be easy to pull additional speaker wire for Atmos at that time. For ceiling speakers I would probably just by some in-ceiling speakers and build a box for them. Probably wait until fall/winter to do the boxes. It is going to suck as it is to pull the speaker wire in a Texas Attic. Heat index at 10:30 this morning was already 101!

 

[rojo]

I have a 126" 16:9 screen and seating is about 12-14' from the screen. My Panasonic has two modes of frame interpolation. I have it set on the lesser of the two.

Sounds like you're doing it right. I'm kind of weird, in that I prefer full on smudgy soap opera smooth motion. If your screen size were smaller or you were seated farther away, I was going to suggest that enabling smooth motion will result in a more profound improvement to video realism than higher resolution. Hell, DVD quality with smooth motion enabled looks better to me than 1080p at 23.97fps, a framerate tied to mechanical projection of celluloid media from the late 1800's. But at your seating distance with that size screen, yeah, you're a prime candidate for 4k. I sort of suspected you take advantage of smooth motion since your current projector and both the candidates you mentioned offer that feature. Too bad Panasonic doesn't yet make a consumer-level 4K projector. Panasonic has the best frame interpolation for smooth motion I think.

I'm trying to resist the urge to get the $4K JVC DLA-x570r projector that I can get now and wait on the 2-6 week backordered Optoma UHD65 for $2.5K $1500 bucks would get me a reasonable Atmos receiver. This would require me to cut the wall back open to run the additional speaker wire. I currently have a 50ft Beldon Series 1 HDMI cable from Blue Jeans that I give a 50/50 shot carrying the 4k HDR signal. If it doesn't then I have to cut open the wall anyway and pull some more Cat6 for HDMI over ethernet. It would be easy to pull additional speaker wire for Atmos at that time. For ceiling speakers I would probably just by some in-ceiling speakers and build a box for them. Probably wait until fall/winter to do the boxes. It is going to suck as it is to pull the speaker wire in a Texas Attic. Heat index at 10:30 this morning was already 101!

Is HDMI over Ethernet cheaper than those Monoprice active cables I linked? Anyway, sounds like you've got an excellent home theater planned. I hope you'll post pics along the way.

 

[lancer360]

Not sure which would be cheaper, but since I have to cut out sheet rock my thinking is Cat6 will be more future proof.

Here is a link to my build.

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/threads/my-new-ht.108028/