confused- best video setup with rx-v663 or get different receiver?

[lwoods98]

We can't figure out if we should change home theater setup (and if so, should we downgrade our receiver?)

I'm new to the home theater setup. We finally bought an HDTV (Samsung 40 inch 1080p, 60hz) and wanted to get a basic home theater with it. We researched receivers and ended up with the Yamaha rx-v663 after learning that it had better video features than yamaha lower models and would serve us well in the future. We really liked the features of the onkyo 606 but heard about heat and sub woofer humming issues.

We purchased Definitive procinema 600 5.1 speaker set. We also have a Nintendo Wii and a Sony upconvert DVD player. We plan to purchase a Blue ray in the next year or so.

We received so many different answers on the best way to hook up the system, but were steered towards running everything through the receiver. Currently, we have our HD cable box and DVD player hooked into the receiver via HDMI. We noticed that a DVD looked a bit pixelated (sp?) so we tried hooking up the DVD player directly to the TV. Big difference in picture quality. The reason we bought this receiver was for it's improved video features.

What's the best way to hook up our system?

If we hook everything up to the TV and run the audio through receiver, should we get the rx-v463 instead? We don't plan on using zoned features or a lot of the audio features.

One last question- I saw that the Yamaha rx-v665 that has just come out has HDMI video pass-through. I read some posts on this and wanted to know if this will help with our picture problem or do we just skip video through the receiver altogether.

We're open to any help/recommendations!

 

[amradel]

Try differnt connection

I am planning to buy a 663 myself, and from what I read on the internet reviews it seams to be a good receiver, specially the decoding of the new HD sound (DTS-HD, Dolby True HD), so if you are planning to get a Blue Ray player you will need this to decode the sound on the HD BlueRay movies.

As for the connection, try connecting the DVD using component and let the 663 do the upconversion not the DVD, or connect the HDMI directly to the TV.

Hope someone else in the forum have better suggestion

 

[lwoods98]

Thanks for your reply. We love the receiver so far (other than the DVD problem). It doesn't seem to have the same issues with the cable box (connecting through receiver vs connecting straight to TV).

I appreciate the suggestion about the component cable- we'll give it a try.

 

[GlocksRock]

Run everything through the receiver, and just one HDMI cable to the tv. If for some reason the picture from the dvd player looks pixelated using HDMI, make sure you have progressive scan turned on if that's an option, or try using component cables, since the receiver will output the picture on the HDMI cable.

 

[lwoods98]

Thanks for the responses- I finally figured out the problem. Turned out that one of the HDMI inputs in the TV was bad. I was using a different HDMI input on my TV when testing the signal from the DVD direct to the TV, which was why it looked better than when I went through the receiver into the bad HDMI input on TV.

We're enjoying the rx-v663 again now that we know it's passing video through without degrading signal.

 

[GlocksRock]

that's good to hear... The receiver should not even touch the hdmi video signal, it should just pass it straight through to the tv after it strips the audio off.