To everyone: Part of the reason I want something cheap is that I consider it wasteful to replace an otherwise perfectly good receiver that does 80% of what I want it to do. ~$500-ish is what I paid for the HTR-5590 at the time, and I'm still largely happy with it. There are just certain features I see out there even on entry level receivers that I don't have on mine. HD Audio and Automatic Room Compensation are the two biggest features. Video Upscaling is a trailing third. Nice features to be sure, but I'm not convinced that those features are worth $500. Especially when Audioholics has shown that even the "good" brands have weakened their amplifier section.
Out of fear that I wasn't clear enough in stating my opinion previously, I'll reword it: Considering VP in a receiver is a waste of your time until you are at the 1k mark and beyond, and even then it's most likely a waste of your time until you can afford an Anthem D2v or Denon AVP at 7k or so.
Of course, it will still cost a whole lot less to get decent VP by getting the receiver that works for you otherwise, PLUS an outboard VP.
Thank you all for your thoughts. I'll now respond to each of you below:
What I'm hoping for is a mainstream company that decided that it would be WAY cheaper to completely scale back the power supply for audio amplification to pre-amp levels and pass that savings onto the consumer. You could use a smaller transformer and heatsink by doing this, and it will save the company a ton of money. To some degree they're doing this already, but I'd rather have a company that just cut out the pretense of audio amplification.
I guess once again I wasn't clear enough. Pre/pros cost more due to the economies of scale. Regardless, the HDMI mch pre/pros of today DO come with extra goodies often not found in sub $1,000 receivers, such as XLR outputs, Audyssey Pro capability, dual HDMI outputs, video processing worth using, etc.
Seriously, if they could package JUST a preamp with half the physical volume, a quarter of the weight, and sell it at $300, they could own the "high-end" market.
As Tom showed us, most of the features I'm interested in are available at the entry level. You're telling me they can't cut out the actual amplifier part, scale back the heat sink and power supply and sell it at the same price? You'd easily undercut almost every preprocessor out there.
Economies of scale. The vast majority of HT enthusiasts buy receivers.
I was seriously considering this, since the price is close to the same as the available receivers, and I'd be supporting a company that's not playing the receiver gain. I'd probably get just the UMC-1 and run the pre-amps into the multi-channel input I have for my current receiver until I could afford to get the UPA-7.
The only trouble is that the Yamaha RX-V665 appears to do everything that I want at a cheaper price. Of course, even cheaper receivers appear to do everything that I want, except give me pre-amp out. Maybe it'd be better to get a cheaper receiver, run a test signal through it, set the volume to the right level (1.2 Vrms?) and then break off the volume knob.
Firstly, I'm not sure if I would put their room correction in the same category as ARC, Audyssey, Trinnov, and the like.
Secondly, I'd really wait to see what the first user reports are like regarding the UMC. It's STILL vaporware as far I'm concerned.
Thirdly, I'd see if Yamaha's 665 has improved certain things from the 663, and for me these would be a) ability to matrix hidef bitstreamed codecs, b) increased flexibility beyond a universal xover point for bass mgmt, c) correction to the clipping of BTB and WTW, and that's all I remember for the moment.
That IS what I meant. I don't want to get into the merits and draw backs of Samsung vs. anyone else and LED vs CCFL. But at the same time, I have a TV in mind and its internal scalers and inputs ARE relevant to the discussion.
Welp, FWIW, bandphan and I would absolutely agree that a plasma + no external scaler at all is still better than the nicest LCD TV you can possibly buy, even if coupled with a $5,000 video processor. But, to each their own, eh? And FWIW, I've never owned either type; for now FP only.
See, this was something I wasn't sure about. TV manufacturers generally don't advertise what chip is doing the scaling. The Oppo is pretty much the perfect BluRay/DVD player in my opinion, partially due to the internal scaler. But I have non-HD Video sources as well, and obviously the Oppo can't scale OTHER video sources. So it'd be nice if this theoretical amp could scale up non-HD sources. The Denon AVR-790 has the same scaling chip as the Oppo at $500 (but of course no pre-amp out). I was curious to know if there was anything else out there.
It's not just the chip, but the overall implementation.
It's not just scaling either, as deinterlacing is part of the equation with standard def.
Some displays deinterlace well, some scale well, some do both well, some do neither well.
My PJ deinterlaces very well, and the scaler is just ok. Deinterlacing has been said to be the trickier part, since two fields coming from separate points in time have to come together.
Otherwise, ANY TV you choose already MUST scale any accepted inputs to its NATIVE resolution. Typically, a $2,000 device that is completely geared towards displaying video does indeed scale better than a $500 receiver that is typically geared towards providing 7 channels of amplification, post processing for all of those channels, with AM/FM tuner, large power supplies, and oh yeah, some afterthought about VP, in the great hopes that the buzzword of upscaling attracts us consumers like flies.
Choosing different target curves based on listening mode, can you elaborate on that?
I could, but I opt not to do so for the time being. Just take my previous post at face value for the moment. I think I've posted enough towards your cause for today, in any case.
