Receivers

I’ve been fairly happy with the low-end RCA “home theater” receiver we’ve had since 2003.  In conjunction with the DVR box, it’s served us pretty darned well, with just two flaws:

First, it’s chronically short of inputs, such that our CD changer has been off-line ever since.  This has been a minor issue, and overcome of late by plugging my PC or Margie’s iPod into the front-facing Line-Ins on the VCR.

More importantly, and secondly, the DVD player on the thing has been … well, it’s always been a bit flaky, but over the last few months it’s been flakier than ever.  Even the cleanest, newest, shiniest DVD may fall outside its reading parameters, and it’s nothing but joy when I have to pop a DVD out because it’s stuttering its way through something — or come to a full halt mid-movie — take it out, wipe it off, put it back in, endure the disc start-up screens and menus, and then watch it come to a full suttering halt again.

I do think Margie expects me to pull out a gun and shoot the thing one of these days.

So I’m off on the market for something new.  Tellingly, RCA is no longer in the receiver business, apparently. 

The biggest issue looks to be one of fundamental architecture.  I’d like to keep things simple and get a similar all-in-one (DVD player and receiver) unit.  That has a number of advantages:

1. A smaller height footprint in the cabinet — and possibly lower heat output (definitely an issue for us).
2. Only one remote for the receiver and DVD player..
3. Usually have some fun bells and whistles — as consumer-oriented sorts of systems — e.g., built-in wireless rear speakers, etc..

The alternative is to get a full-blown receiver — the 6-inch-tall kind of component — plus a separate DVD player.  The advantages here:

1. Usually have a lot more ports in/out.
2. If the DVD player goes south, or if in a year or two I want to get a HD-DVD unit, etc., I can go ahead and just replace that piece. 
3. Higher power output, in general.

There’s actually not that much difference in price between some of the fancier home theater all-in-one units and the low-end receiver-plus-DVD-player solution.  So now it’s a matter of comparing features and costs and just doing it.

A couple of other items on the list to consider in all of this:

1. A lot of DVD players (both stand-alone and in receivers) are now 5-disc changes.  That would be handy, as we often play duelling discs between what Katherine’s watching vs. what we’re watching.
2. I’d love to give the wireless rear speakers another stab — I suspect that the current setup I patched together failed not because of the concept but because of the patching.  At least a couple of the units I looked at had that feature.
3. We don’t, at the moment, need the DVD upgrade “up-conversion” stuff to do normal DVDs better on hi-def TV sets.  It would be nice to have for the future, but it’s nothing we need now with our 5-year-old TV set.
4. It appears that there is at least some intercomponent communication / cable simplification / etc. in HDMI — which, of course our older TV doesn’t support.  That may not be a bad thing, given its ties to DRM, but it’s still annoying.
5. Speaking of TVs … ugh.  It’s becoming progressively more difficult to find a “normal” TV any more — the old 4:3 ratio, let alone a big honking CRT.  That shouldn’t be a bad thing, except that we have a beautiful entertainment console built into the wall courtesy of an old home improvement project that is designed around a 25″ 4:3 TV.  What we’ll do when it comes time to replace it within something spiffier and higher-def I have no idea.

So that’s where we are, with my going to places like Best Buy and Ultimate Electronics, pushing buttons, writing down model numbers and prices, then going back to the computer and looking at reviews and sighing a lot.

As I’ve been going through this process, there are a lot of annoying similarities to the computer world.  To wit, there’s almost zero thought given to the upgrade world, and there’s very little help for folks who aren’t technophiles (“Why, of course I know the difference between HDMI for 1080i up-conversion with DVI and half-caf espresso vs. component video / S-video solutions with a macchiato twist”).  Bleah.

So with any luck, I’ll be picking up something in the next few weeks.  And then I can start playing around with the cabling again …