300buck home theatre reciver with hard drive / mp3 abilitiy

[ranthore]

hey i have a blue ray player and a flat screen tv, i am looking for a reciver, i see alot have mp3 docks, was wondering if any come with a hard drive or a way to store mp3 files on the reciver itself, i personaly dont use a mp3 player and wouldnt want ot have to buy one to play mp3 files at home, but will do if thats the only option. btw ill be using for sound for my movies and sound for games and music.

btw i just bought some polk audio r50s and a 100wat subwoofer from polk on black friday for massive cheap, i just need a reciver to get me going.

thanks in advance for all your advice

oh btw i only need 5.1 but 7.1 wouldnt hurt but doubt ill ever use

 

[Adam]

Can your Blu-ray player play MP3 files? If so, you could just put the MP3 files onto a disc and do it that way. You can store a huge number of MP3 files on even a single-layer DVD (that cost about 20 cents these days). I'd need to look around and see if there are any receivers that can decode MP3 files in that price range - but I don't know of any that have built-in hard drives.

BTW, do you want to be able to process audio over HDMI with the receiver?

 

[ranthore]

yea it does mp3 files, im actually quite confused about the hdmi thing, blueray player does hdmi and it connects directly to the tv, it also has a optical audio out which i figured would go to the reciver, isnt hdmi mostly for video why would i need to run video through the reciver? sorry bout my ignorance.

 

[Adam]

HDMI carries both audio and video. You can run the video through your receiver for convenience if you have more than one video source because it will let you switch the audio and video in one place. You certainly don't need to run the video through the receiver.

As for the audio reason to do it, optical and coax digital audio connections can't pass the new lossless codecs (like Dolby TrueHD) because they simply can't handle the amount of data that needs to be sent. HDMI can. So, if you get a receiver that can process the audio over HDMI, then you can take advantage of the lossless codecs that come on some Blu-rays. Alternatively, if your Blu-ray player has multi-channel analog outputs, you can have the Blu-ray player do the decoding of the lossless formats and send the audio to your receiver over those analog connections - you just need to get a receiver with multi-channel inputs (which you definitely can for under $300).

I hope that wasn't too confusing. In short, there's more than one way to set up your system. You choice of receiver comes down to how you want to do it and how much flexibility you want to have to change your mind.

 

[ranthore]

so any reccomendations on reciver, speakres say 100-150 watt reciver reccomended and there 8 ohms

 

[Adam]

One inexpensive receiver that does not process audio over HDMI, but that has a lot of good features, is the Onkyo 506 that is currently $150 at newegg.com.

 

[ranthore]

well if hdmi does have a better signal any references for best reciver in 350ish range that gets audio from hdmi, that does at least 100 wats per channel 5.1

 

[Seth=L]

No home theater receiver has a hard drive inside of it. The best you can do is find a receiver that has a USB or network interface and either use an external HDD or flash drive to hold the music and allow the receiver to manage it. If using a network connection it acts as a client to your "host server", typically your PC that has music stored on it.

The PS3 allows me to circumvent cost, as it has a hard drive as well as USB ports and networking capability. Since the PS3 can process all HD audio codecs available internally and send them out over HDMI as LPCM it's a perfect match for lower cost receivers that might not have the most up to date processing (basically all you would need is a receiver that supports 7.1 LPCM over HDMI to get the most out of it).

If you purchased the Blu-ray player recently you could return it in favor of a new or used Playstation 3 to support these features you desire.

Just one possible solution to many, but this one is probably one of the more cost effective ending with a very rounded finished result.