Yamaha RX-V661 help!

[lario]

I am looking at purchasing the RX-V661 and have noticed while it does have the 2 HDMI inputs (version 1.2a, I believe) it also indicates that this version of HDMI does not have the ability to receive Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD-Master soundtracks via HDMI (from Blu-ray and HD DVD players). Should this be considered a drawback? There are Blue-ray and HD players that can decode, right? I'm also aware that the unit is unable to convert analog signals to the HDMI output....again, is this really a big deal? Please help.

 

[darien87]

Just get yourself a player that does the decoding, like the PS 3 and the 661 works like a charm. I love mine.

 

[fmw]

I think I would view HDMI 1.3 as a "future proofing" type of issue rather than a must have. If your player won't decode these types of codecs, then there are other codecs on most DVD's that will work almost as well. If you like the other things about the receiver, I wouldn't let the HDMI version kill the deal for you.

 

[jcPanny]

Hdmi 1.3

The HDMI 1.3 standard is ambiguous because products can claim to meet the spec even if they don't support the deep color and audio decoding functions of HDMI 1.3. All of the current HD players will output a multichannel PCM audio track for your HDMI receiver which should work fine with the Yamaha. The new Onkyo 605 is HDMI 1.3 and will do the decoding, but it doesn't have pre-amp outputs.