Just wondering if there is any benefit of having hdmi ins and outs if i will only be using 2.1 for my home theatre?
In this case, the questions really are:
1) What sources will you be playing? If it's just a cable box and a DVD player, you could feed them directly to the TV and run audio cables to the receiver. If you have more sources constant switching of both units may become an issue, which leads us to:
2) Where do you want the sources switched? If you switch sources as above, you will always have to change the TV input source, then also change the receiver input source to match. If you run all sources audio and video through the receiver, then you only have to switch the receiver when you change sources. The TV can remain on the same input and act as a monitor with only a single wire connection. This is the easiest way to manage your home theater devices, which leads us to;
3) Will the home theater always remain a 2.1 system or is there any possibility of expansion to 5.1 or 7.1 in the future? If it will always be a 2.1 system, you might be better off running video to the TV as above and getting a solid
integrated amplifier rather than a receiver. If it will always remain a 2.1 system, you can have no need for all the various codecs and can use the analog inputs from your source devices into a NAD or Rotel integrated amplifier for much less cost and likely better results than the system you are currently looking at for 2.1 channel.
