4K Upgrade has turned costly

[BoredSysAdmin]

Thanks man! Glad to see some familiar names around here still!

Damn, It's soon will be 10 years since I decided to start trolling here
Now well over 10k posts and 3k likes, but I guess our paths haven't crossed much in the early days.
Anyhow it's always cool to see old guard reuniting here at AH. Welcome back.
I see your location is in Tampa - Were you at AH GTG2012?

 

[lovinthehd]

Yep, my Dad has a 52" Samsung plasma. Beautiful picture. I think I'll always have a fondness for plasma displays, even if they are now considered "old tech" and not near as sexy as these ultra slim LED TV's hah.

Yep, altho my plasma (PN59D8000) is a svelte 1.8" thick...

 

[Halon451]

Damn, It's soon will be 10 years since I decided to start trolling here
Now well over 10k posts and 3k likes, but I guess our paths haven't crossed much in the early days.
Anyhow it's always cool to see old guard reuniting here at AH. Welcome back.
I see your location is in Tampa - Were you at AH GTG2012?

Nah I was not unfortunately. I had to kind of back away from the internet in general and refocus on some rather pressing things in life (i.e., went back to school to formally complete my engineering degree, then my dad got sick so I was dealing with that..) So I missed the memo on the 2012 GTG. And, for all intents and purposes, I was pretty well set with my HT system and just enjoyed it as much as I could. That is.. until the old "upgrade bug" bit me hard.

 

[rojo]

Thanks man! Glad to see some familiar names around here still! Yeah, 65" go big or go home right? Haha.. well I sit about 7-8' away (maybe a tad more), so per your handy chart there, looks like I'm just within the "Ultra HD Worth It" range. I can say this - I do notice a difference when feeding it actual 4K content. Even the upscaled 1080p stuff looks better, but that could be entirely placebo effect.

On the downside - and this isn't the thread to discuss displays obviously, I will truly miss the richness of color and the deep blacks that old Panny plasma can produce. Granted it's still in use in the bedroom but I don't do my serious movie watching there. Not sure where I stand on the Samsung's edge-lit backlighting either, it's just weird.. and the viewing angle sucks compared to the Panny. But seated in the main viewing position she's a beauty in her own right. It's too bad Panasonic left the game and let Samsung take over the market.

Ya, video upscaling merely stretches the picture to avoid letterboxing. I've never seen a gadget that will smooth, sharpen, or otherwise interpolate the stretched pixels when upscaling. I could be mistaken about that, but in my experience upscaling is not nearly as fancy as it sounds.

Re: missing deep blacks, adding some ambient lighting behind your screen can make the blacks seem blacker. Or it could just be that these guys are a bad influence on me. FWIW, backlighting has high WAF according to my wife. Something to think about, anyway.

Back to the topic of the thread, my recommendation is the Marantz SR5010 if you care about Atmos or DTS:X; or the Marantz SR6009 if not. It might take a bit to get used to all the relevant information appearing either in a display too small to read from your seats or via OSD; but if you're looking for a clean look, the Marantz AVRs are about as inconspicuous to the people who aren't holding the remote control as it gets.

 

[Halon451]

I didn't even know if my login would still work or if my whole profile might have been deleted due to inactivity haha

 

[Halon451]

Back to the topic of the thread, my recommendation is the Marantz SR5010 if you care about Atmos or DTS:X; or the Marantz SR6009 if not.

Yeah I was actually looking at the Marantz SR5011 which looks to be one step up from the 5010 and within my price range and packs 2x more RMS watts per channel in under the hood. I actually would like to have the Atmos and DTS: X cause I figure "why not, if I'm upgrading may as well future-proof myself for as long as is possible." Though I've honestly not heard a good Atmos or DTS: X HT setup yet to know what the difference from the previous advanced surround formats. My current Pioneer doesn't power any speaker configs < 8 ohm either, which I'm finding an attractive option, cause I'm currently running an unbridged terminal setup on my mains, but I do like the thought of having the flexibility to bridge those terminals and run a lower impedance setup. Big thumbs up there. Both this one and the Denon offer stability at 6 ohm and (I think) the Denon is stable into 4 ohms as well. I'd have to go look again.

As for the blacks on my display. I did take the time and properly calibrated the new Samsung and I will admit, for an LCD TV I'm pretty impressed with the black levels. It doesn't seem a rich or as natural as the plasma, but that's to be expected. The only thing I don't like is the blossoming effect from the edge-lit backlighting. It's an annoying design oversight, IMO but usually only noticeable under very high contrast situations (i.e., white lettering on solid black backgrounds).

 

[lovinthehd]

The 5011 doesn't have twice the power, amp section is spec'd the same. Nice summary in post 4 in this thread as to differences between 5010 and 5011...

 

[Halon451]

The 5011 doesn't have twice the power, amp section is spec'd the same. Nice summary in post 4 in this thread as to differences between 5010 and 5011...

I was reading some reviews on the 5011 and at least a few users complained of its inability to switch between 1080p and 4k sources without going on the blink. I'm kind of on new ground here with this so bear with me... I'm thinking to myself, "Okay, self, you have both 1080 and 4k sources you're hooking up to this thing, would this be an issue?" Granted, it's hard to decipher what's really going on from a review often times and you never know if maybe the person just didn't know what they were doing or had it set up wrong or whatever. If it were just one review I would dismiss it. But I read at least three different ones that mentioned this.

 

[Halon451]

Also that post was a very nice summary but didn't mention power handling. I read the specs for both the 5010 and the 5011. One was 100w RMS per channel, the other said 200w RMS per channel. What am I missing?

 

[lovinthehd]

Did you read thru that thread for those issues? Then again hdmi handshake issues between different brands is just one of hdmi's weaknesses. No 4k stuff for me, so haven't had any experience in that particular regard either.

 

[lovinthehd]

Also that post was a very nice summary but didn't mention power handling. I read the specs for both the 5010 and the 5011. One was 100w RMS per channel, the other said 200w RMS per channel. What am I missing?

200w/ch is for one channel at 6ohms at 1 khz at 10% THD....for both units. Look at the spec page for each side by side from the Marantz site.

 

[Halon451]

I'm still reading it. It's fairly lengthy and I'm up against time to head out for the day so I have to bookmark it for later. Yeah, I had regular HD figured out frontwards and back, now I'm finding the move to 4K comes with a lot more stuff to figure out besides getting the right TV haha.

Oh well. Such is technology and those who pursue it. Appreciate the help and the links!

 

[Halon451]

Such as HDCP 2.2...

 

[Halon451]

200w/ch is for one channel at 6ohms at 1 khz at 10% THD....for both units. Look at the spec page for each side by side from the Marantz site.

Ah, gotcha. I must have skimmed that too quickly, thanks. I will take a closer look. I love how these manufacturer's list their power specs.. it's like, "okay I would NEVER actually run the receiver like that, but thanks for the info." I'm really just interested in a typical RMS output for my particular setup and what kind of power could I expect to be delivered to my speakers under regular listening circumstances. lol

But, 200w sounds a lot better than saying 100w per channel (or whatever) for all channels driven. It's all about the marketing.

 

[lovinthehd]

Ah, gotcha. I must have skimmed that too quickly, thanks. I will take a closer look. I love how these manufacturer's list their power specs.. it's like, "okay I would NEVER actually run the receiver like that, but thanks for the info." I'm really just interested in a typical RMS output for my particular setup and what kind of power could I expect to be delivered to my speakers under regular listening circumstances. lol

But, 200w sounds a lot better than saying 100w per channel (or whatever) for all channels driven. It's all about the marketing.

Yep, gotta be careful and compare like stats to like stats. ACD, all channel driven, isn't all that meaningful, but doubt it's more than 70w/ch ACD based on the similar 5009 bench test here

ps Keep in mind that even if it did have double the power, that's only a 3dB advantage....

 

[Halon451]

Yep, gotta be careful and compare like stats to like stats. ACD, all channel driven, isn't all that meaningful, but doubt it's more than 70w/ch ACD based on the similar 5009 bench test here

ps Keep in mind that even if it did have double the power, that's only a 3dB advantage....

It's not just about loudness it's about efficiency too. Particularly at peak levels.

 

[lovinthehd]

It's not just about loudness it's about efficiency too. Particularly at peak levels.

Efficiency? Not sure I understand it in this context.

 

[Halon451]

I mean that as in the whole speaker / AVR pairing. I'm not necessarily trying to make it louder with those extra watts, just ensure the sound stays clean when pushed.

 

[Halon451]

I know that has to do with the speaker as much as it does the amp that's driving it. But I also know all too well what an underpowered speaker system sounds like

 

[lovinthehd]

I mean that as in the whole speaker / AVR pairing. I'm not necessarily trying to make it louder with those extra watts, just ensure the sound stays clean when pushed.

Extra watts are what make it louder, when you move up in into the territory where the amp runs out of gas, you could experience higher distortion or outright clipping. Most avrs power only varies a few dB, it's not signficant. As long as the amp handles the speakers impedance requirements and your spl goals it's sufficient, otherwise you need more amp!