After researching for a month or so on general HDTV, Home Theater, High Definition forums, I make the following, not quite well informed, observation; the industry appears to be "in transition".
By that I mean that old technologies (2-channel audio, s-video, composite video) are still being used on ALMOST EVERY product. Receivers are the biggest culpret - but even my new Panasonic DMP-BD60 blu-ray has composite video and 2 channel audio in addition to the HDMI output.
While I admit that having 2-channel audio may still be necessary, why are they on EVERY receiver? And so many? It seems that s-video is almost gone with this years models, but there are still tons of composite video connections even on the most high end of receivers.
It would seem to be cost effective and marketable to have a home theater receiver that only supported HDMI. Or at least concentrated on HDMI while providing one or two obsolete input formats.
I really don't have a "theater". I have a living room where we enjoy video, movies as well as watch news, weather, and TV shows. I almost never use that system to listen to music.
To me - a perfect receiver would have 5 HDMI inputs, 3 component inputs (upconverting to HDMI), 3 optical audio inputs, maybe 2 composite video inputs, and 2 2-channel audio inputs - of course an internet connection to keep with firmware releases.
Now that I have stirred the pot - what do you think?
...gene
By that I mean that old technologies (2-channel audio, s-video, composite video) are still being used on ALMOST EVERY product. Receivers are the biggest culpret - but even my new Panasonic DMP-BD60 blu-ray has composite video and 2 channel audio in addition to the HDMI output.
While I admit that having 2-channel audio may still be necessary, why are they on EVERY receiver? And so many? It seems that s-video is almost gone with this years models, but there are still tons of composite video connections even on the most high end of receivers.
It would seem to be cost effective and marketable to have a home theater receiver that only supported HDMI. Or at least concentrated on HDMI while providing one or two obsolete input formats.
I really don't have a "theater". I have a living room where we enjoy video, movies as well as watch news, weather, and TV shows. I almost never use that system to listen to music.
To me - a perfect receiver would have 5 HDMI inputs, 3 component inputs (upconverting to HDMI), 3 optical audio inputs, maybe 2 composite video inputs, and 2 2-channel audio inputs - of course an internet connection to keep with firmware releases.
Now that I have stirred the pot - what do you think?
...gene