Morning after the night before on the new receiver.  Some thoughts ...

1. Cabling was pretty easy because I made sure that the new receiver was a super-set of the old one.  Since the peripheral equipment didn't change -- except for a separate DVD player* -- the connections were relatively easy-peasy.  I also took the opportunity to clean up the cabling, etc. on the shelf.
2. I have the cable box / DVR on the bottom, below the receiver, since I think that will work better with heat.  The receiver has very tall feet (prolly for ventilation), and it's got about an inch, inch-and-a-half above it.  We could, in theory, raise the shelf above.  (The whole entertainment center needs some rearchitecture, potentially, because of future TV changes.)
3. I don't have the subwoofer connected.  The old RCA Home-Theater-in-a-Box (HTiB) had an unpowered, unamped subwoofer (basic speaker wire hookup).  The Yamaha has an RCA connect for a Subwoofer Pre-Out, assuming a powered/amped subwoofer.  So either I need a new subwoofer, or I need to buy an amp.
4. No problems in the first four hours of usage with the old RCA speakers.  The old HTiB was 200w net; the new receiver is 700w, which means that I could in theory blow out the speaker system.  Hopefully that won't happen, with care, until age or other failings make changing the speakers out a natural evolution.
5. I have a real jones to reevaluate wireless surround/rear speakers.  The stuff I got back then was crude, rough, and never really worked for us.  The technology has improved a lot over the last 3-odd years, though -- Rocketfish has one of the new products out there.
6. The Yamaha receiver has some nice auto-discovery sound evaluation tools -- a mic that you roll over to where you sit and then let the system figure out how different speakers should be balanced.  But that's doing to depend on the speakers being ever they're going to be.

I'm sure Margie will be pleased that I'm not planning on doing anything on this until, well, after the new year. :-)

There's some good info, btw, on A/V wiring and technology here.

Filed under :: Hi-Tech
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My one suggestion when it comes time to go with HDMI:

When purchasing HDMI cables, spend the extra $10 to get the longer ones. The connector on mine broke because the cable was barely long enough to reach from the DVR to the TV. I had to replace a $75 cable because I hadn't initially bought the $85 one.