Quote Originally Posted by Mr Peabody
Thanks for the link. It's interesting when DVD came out everyone was saying our receivers will be obsolete, we need receivers with the latest and greatest decoding. At the time I had an Arcam processor with 3 channels of built in amplification and I used the "Theater Through" on my integrated for the other two channels. I sold this and bought another processor because I thought some day I wouldn't be able to find a DVD with analog outs. Now the industry does a 180. Forget decoding in the receiver and just make sure you have analog pass through.

Some will argue, but the set up with analog out on the DVD will make having a quality unit necessary for good sound as it does with a CD player. It will be interesting to see if receivers drop processing or struggle to keep up with the decoding. According to the articles in the link that would be almost futile.
This whole HDMI 1.3 thing has become a bit silly.
I doubt receiver's will drop the processing - that's pretty cheap and easy to throw in as a value-added feature, and they can charge a mint for extra processing ability. I can see them delaying from adding all the processing features until the smoke clears and the market or industry picks a clear direction though. Good to know my analog inputs are still worth something though.

I generally flip a/v receivers every 2-3 years (that's way too often). I suspect I'll hold on to this one a bit longer.

I really do hope HDMI gets figured out, and adequately replaces analog cables while doing what it's suppose to do though - I have one ugly mess o' cables behind my rack and TV, even tied up and labelled it's a pain.

1 HDMI cable has the potential in my system to replace:
- 1 optical cable
- a set of 3 component video cables
- 6 analog cables for my multichannel music

That's 9 fewer lines running from DVD player to receiver...Ugh.
Until then, I'll just keep getting nagged.