I have the 8200 and its hooked up to a crt TV. Im going to upgrade the TV. tHE MARANTZ only has component inputs. One question is how much if anything do i loose by not going for Hdmi inputs and outputs. Another is how important do you think the upgrding and auto switching is. Any other thoughts appreciated thanks Rudy
As far as automatic switching goes, that is merely a convenience, and you must judge for yourself how important that is. My advice is to not upgrade until you need something that your current model cannot do. The reason is, there will always be something new in the future, and if you buy now, you won't get whatever useful thing might be released next year. So save your money for some future purchase, if you don't need something new now. Of course, if you have money to burn, then buy some flagship receiver and replace it as soon as they come out with a new one.
I presume you are planning on purchasing or already have something that has an HDMI output (otherwise, there is no need for HDMI switching in the receiver). If so, you can connect the HDMI directly to the TV, and connect the audio to the receiver. Which audio connection will depend upon what device we are talking about. If it is simply a DVD player with HDMI output, use the optical or coaxial digital audio output to connect to the receiver. But if it is SACD, DVD-Audio, or Blu-Ray, you might want to use multichannel analog outputs on the player, if it has them.
