Which receiver? Which DVD? Arrggh...

[lawfive]

Thank goodness I found you guys... My wife gave me permission (yes, I'm whipped) to create a tiny little 10 x 11 man room in the downstairs guest bedroom. Since then I've been busy bleeding money for furniture and hardware. I'm pretty much a newbie at HD and current home theater A/V standards.

Have now:

• Son's Xbox (not a 360)
• 60 GB Video IPod with my entire CD collection on it (and no porncasts )
• Bose Acoustimass 6 (Yeah, I know, but it's a TINY room.)

On order:

• Panasonic TH-42PHD8UK 42" plasma with an HDMI card (after much research and an in-person looksee).
• Homebuilt gaming PC with dual DVI (one will drive a Dell 24" monitor) and digital coax audio. (I actually got two; my teenaged boy will have the other one in his room.)
• Comcast Motorola HD cable box with component & HDMI outputs.

Will get someday, when available:

• HD Tivo or Comcast HD DVR cable box.

Player to be named later:

• DVD

My quandry: I want to do all of my video switching through an AV receiver and just feed one HDMI output to the plasma, unlike my family room setup where my Harmony remote slowly jukes a Samsung 50" DLP between multiple inputs. I was all set to pull the trigger on the Yamaha RX-V2600 when I discovered your discussion of the HDMI repeater incompatibility in cable set top boxes. This limits my HDMI/DVI switching requirements to the PC and DVD, which to my limited understanding won't benefit from upscaling.

Which leads me to wonder: is the Yamaha overkill for me? One problem with the Yamaha is its size: 17+ inches deep; won't fit my bookshelves. I'll find a place for it (closet?) if it's really what I need, but I'm no longer sure that it is.

My questions to you guys:

1. Is this the right receiver for my setup, or should I be looking at others?
2. What's a decent DVD player to go with it (I don't need HD/BR yet)?
3. Corollary question: with my plasma, will I notice a difference between component and HDMI outputs on a DVD player?

Sorry for the long-winded post. It's lonely and quiet in my mini-man room right now...

-- Jerry

 

[agarwalro]

1. Is this the right receiver for my setup, or should I be looking at others?
2. What's a decent DVD player to go with it (I don't need HD/BR yet)?
3. Corollary question: with my plasma, will I notice a difference between component and HDMI outputs on a DVD player?

1. Even though there are many HDMI or DVI switching receives out there, none work dependably with cable or satellite boxes. So any HDMI switching receiver will meet all your needs, if it will actually do the trick... 50-50. I recommend getting the Yammy 2500 or denon 3805 or HK 635 and a stand alone HDMI switcher.
2. Look at Oppo Digital 971H for a exceptional budget player, Denon 2910 for mid budget and Denon 3910 for upper budget and finally Denon 5910 if you must have the absolute best there is out there (barring the boutique players... you know the $10,000 DVD players that perform worse than the $100.00 players).
3. Depends. Too many variables. You will have to figure this one out yourself by trying the same material using the two. Most DVD players dont output scaled HD signal (480i upscaled to 720p or 1080i) on component, only progressive (480p). So there is a good chance that this depends on the up-scaler built into your TV. There are claims that plasmas (and other fixed pixel displays) perform the best when fed signal at their native resolution.

 

[lawfive]

Thanks for the info. I've already pulled the trigger, both upsizing & downsizing.

I decided to run component to the plasma for now, so I downsized on the receiver: Yamaha RXV659. A plus: the iPod integration.

I upsized some on the speakers: Boston Acoustics VR2's, VRC's, and VRX.