I'm looking to get new receiver/speakers. To drive whichever speakers I wind up buying I'm considering either the Yamaha RX-V659 or the Onkyo TX-SR674. Audioholics loved the Yammy and the Onkyo was very favorably reviewed by cnet, but I was wondering if maybe Onkyo cut corners elsewhere to get HDMI upconverting at that price point. I've read a couple comments on the Yammy on this board. Does anyone have any experience hearing the two together? The Onkyo is very new and my dealer doesn't have one in yet.
As far as speakers go, I know I'm looking in the low end compared to many of you, but I was wondering if anyone has heard the new Def Tech Procinema 800 & 1000 side-by-side and how different they sound. TPV reviewed the 1000 very favorably, but I've yet to find a review of the 800. My local Def Tech dealer is still demo-ing the procinema 80's (which I've heard and found to sound very good) until he finds someone to buy the floor model, but says the 800's will "sound very similar." He doesn't have any demo of the 1000, so the opinion of anyone who has heard both speakers will be very helpful. I'm considering going for the 1000's, because of the review and because "they must be better" but I kind of feel like I need some basis for my decision to justify the extra $500 to SWMBO. Would a non-audiophile hear almost 50% better sound from the 1000's (1099 vs 1649 MSRP)?
Bob: Do you really need HDMI upconverting? Most new (and cheap) DVD players can be set up to upconvert to 720P or 1080i.
Likewise, many cable/Sat TV HD desktop boxes or DVRs also can upconvert to 720p or 1080i.
Additionally, most newer HD monitors have 2 or more HDMI inputs so that you can feed HDMI directly to the monitor from these sources.
I will not even go into the HDMI router/handshake issues that some cable/SAT boxes have with AVRs (or AVRs have with boxes) which are put into the middle of a HDMI stream.