Re: Is component video and HD audio over HDMI possible?
In my setup – for almost all my sources – audio goes to the AVR, video goes to the TV. All connections to the tv are HDMI or component depending on the source. All audio connections are analog or SPDIF.
Running video direct to the tv means you can’t rely on the AVR to perform input switching by itself, but it also means that when anything changes with regards to my ability to output a video signal I only have to worry about the tv.
Now with the AVR – there are a couple reasons to upgrade:
– More power
– New features
IMO, you are much better off increasing power by adding external amplification. Upgrading from a 90W AVR to a 100W AVR is not going to buy you the headroom of dedicated amplification. Nicely, my older Denon has 7.1 PreOuts. This have since been removed from any Denon model less than $1200 (wouldn’t want anyone buying the $379 Denon and adding their own amplification 🙂 ).
New features falls into two categories for me – Surround format support and other. In Sound formats we have DTS-HD and Dolby True-HD. In the Other category there are things like Audessy EQ.
With a full HTPC running Blu-ray playback I have decoding support for DTS HD and Dolby TrueHD in my PC and can send this to my AVR using Analog out. The same would be possible if you have an old AVR with just HDMI 1.0 or some such. Decode in the computer and output LPCM. None of my other sources take advantage these formats. So no worries there.
These leaves me with Auddessy EQ as a reason to upgrade. It’s tempting, but tough to justify considering that that would be the only thing I would get from a new AVR. Theoretically I have Room Correction in Windows 7 – I’m just a little scared of it, and I think one issue is that to use it I have to revert to the Win7 default audio driver. Maybe I’ll try that one day and see how it sounds.
As long as I can continue to support new surround formats on the HTPC, there is little value to upgrading my AVR.