I don’t know much about the home theater side of audio. I read some stuff where people talk about receivers having video connections like HDMI or whatever, and I don’t understand why that is. Why would a receiver handle video signals? Wouldn’t those just go from the cable box or disc player into the TV? Doesn’t the receiver just handle audio?
I’m getting ready to buy a Yamaha YSP soundbar that has:
“2 optical/1 coaxial digital and 2 analog audio input terminals, and 2 component video and 3 composite video output terminals, subwoofer output terminal, IR port, and RS-232C interface.”
I hear people talking about needing HDMI connections in a receiver, so does that mean I will have some sort of trouble using it with Blu-Ray or HDTV?
It lets you switch between different video sources, the same way you’d use a stereo receiver to switch between audio sources.
E.g., you have a cable box, a Blu-ray player, and a Nintendo. You plug the audio and video outputs of all of them into your receiver, and one video line goes from your receiver to the TV.
Then you select which device you want on the receiver, and the video and audio is handled automatically.
ETA: As for your Blu-Ray player, it may have more than one output type available on it. If it only has HDMI, you can still plug it directly into the TV. You just lose the convenience of controlling everything from the receiver.
Any BluRay player I have seen also has optical or coaxial out. Using these connections you will not be able to get the higher quality audio that BluRay offers (Dolby TruHD/DTS-HD) as there is not enough bandwidth to carry the signal. It will instead default to the previous generation Dolby 5.1/DTS, which has higher compression. However, unless you have a fairly nice pair of speakers, you won’t notice a big difference.
Friedo pretty much nailed it on the video signal side.
It’s highly unlikely that someone with an HDMI input on their TV would need such a video “receiver”. Even my cheap TV has 2 composite, one s-video, one component, one HDMI-DVI, and a PC-VGA. All controlled by remote control.
But does your TV have 5.1 output? Even a basic home theater receiver is going to produce much better sound than a television. If you have multiple sources (Blu-Ray, DVR), being able to switch video and sound is an enormous convenience.
I just had to go through this very thing recently when I splurged on getting a whole home theater setting.
There are any number of ways you can handle it, but the easiest, most pain-free way for me was to get a receiver that did HDMI (repeater type). That way, I connected my PVR/HD box, BD player, and media center straight to the receiver, and then the receiver to the TV. So there’s only one input my TV has to be set to, and all switching happens through the receiver. I tie it all together with a Logitech HarmonyOne and it’s been the most painless setup I could imagine.
Speaking of receivers/sound, we’re actually in the market for one (well, probably on Black Friday, Internet Thursday, or maybe Ice Cream Sunday), and were wondering if our Blu-Ray player has all the decoding we could want, do we need to care if the receiver has those features? Where else could it come into play?
Yeah, as long as the receiver can decode the signals the devices you’re plugging into it are sending (various flavours of Dolby, mostly) and as long as the receiver has the inputs you need, then the rest is mainly just extra features.