Yamaha or Sony a/v Receiver & a/v Must Haves

[Hal]

Hello. I am in the market for a new a/v receiver to serve as the center of a small home theatre system. I have Sharp 32 inch 720 LCD and two Boston Acoustics VR950 floor speakers. To these I'll add an HD DVD player, an a/v receiver, and a center speaker. If budget allows I may add two rear speakers.

You can see this is not going to be the king of all home theatre systems. The goal is simply to enhance my occassional DVD watching and improve the sound on the television.

So, this thread will concentrate on the a/v receiver. I'll start another to address the DVD player.

Do folks on this board have a preference of Yamaha or Sony for an a/v receiver? (Or another brand?) The price range is $350 or less.

Anyone have a quick answer to the question what is the difference between Yamaha's HTR series a/v receivers and their RX series?

I compared two Yamaha 5.1 a/v receivers on Bestbuy's website. Out of the product specifications (points of comparison), the following seemed important to me:

Watts per channel
Doly Digital Decoder (Yes or No)
DTS Decoder (Yes or No)
Dolby Pro-logic Decoder (Yes or No)
DSP Soundfields
Satellite Radio Ready (Yes or No)
HDMI Inputs
5.1 Channel Inputs
Digital Inputs
Component Video Inputs
Component Video Outputs
Composite Video Outputs
Multiroom Capacity
Remote Control Type
On Screen Display
6.1 Channel Input
DTS ES Discrete 6.1
DTS ES Matrix 6.1
DTS 96/24
DTS Nwo 6
HDTV Compatibility
Video Up Conversion
Speaker A/B Switching

What other points of comparison should I be considering? What other features on an a/v receiver should I be looking for?

Thanks for your help.

[Hal]

So, I've been advised to forego the DVD player and wait until I can afford a Blue-Ray. So, I'll just concentrate on the a/v receiver. Any thoughts?

[Hal]

Specifically, what about the Yamaha RX-V363BL?

[f0rge]

best bang for the buck for features, sound quality, and power is currently the Onkyo TR-SX605 or the newer 606.

http://www.us.onkyo.com/prod_class.cfm?class=Receiver

you should be able to pick one up in the $350 range.

that yamaha doesn't have dolby trueHD or DTS:MA, two new sound formats for bluray, if you're looking to pick up a bluray player in the future i'd be looking at something that supports the new formats.

[robotec]

The Yamaha 663 can be had for 349.00 shipped from 6ave.com.
It has all the bells and whistles needed for your future Blu-Ray.