MojoLists

To upgrade or make do with what you have is a constant question home theater enthusiast must answer on a regular basis. The most common problem facing us today is to upgrade our old receivers to one that can handle HDMI. Even receivers purchased today may not handle HDMI or only switch the video, as is the case in my living room where my Harmon Kardon passes two HDMI signals.

This works in that room as the speakers are hand me downs from my first 5.1 system 10 years ago and HD audio isn’t an issue. My problem comes in my dedicated theater where I have a Kenwood Sovereign receiver, one of the few I have found capable of driving the power hungry 4-ohm load of my Magnepan system through a full on action movie without overheating.

The Kenwood doesn’t even do component video switching but I am not giving it up, I love the warm sound and frankly, can’t afford to upgrade right now. I had to ask myself if HD audio was worth it and I decided it was so I waited until a Blu-Ray player came out that was capable of sending all of the HD audio formats via analog outputs. I settled on the Sony S550, I love it, the sound improvement over standard Dolby, and DTS is impressive, more open, detailed and enveloping.

HDMI switches are readily available at reasonable prices if you are running out of connections on your television. These switches can be manual, automatic or remote controlled depending on your budget.

I decided I could live with the Kenwood for a while longer, not that I have much of a choice and the cost of the Sony S550 was significantly lower than upgrading my receiver. For those of you who want to keep your DVD-A/SACD player connected to your receiver inputs look to Zektor for a high quality 8 channel analog switch or consider the budget solution of using a A/V switch.

In addition Denon has a universal Blu-Ray player, priced somewhere close to new car territory that solves this problem altogether. Oppo is also jumping into the universal Blu-Ray market with a rumored MSRP between $499 and $599 and considering the quality of their DVD players, this may be a real bargain.

If you enjoy the sound of your current receiver do your wallet a favor and keep it, you can still enjoy the sound and visual improvement of HD without falling into the upgrade trap. Besides, the receiver you want to buy today will likely be outdated next week.