Buy Sony STR-DH710 7.1-channel Blu-ray Disc A/V Receiver with 6 HD Inputs (3 HDMI, 3 Component) (Black)

All I wanted was a decent AV reciever that would let me connect my AV devices to my projector with as few cabling headaches and button pushing requirements as possible. I thought I had researched this one thoroughly - I even got the PDF manual ahead of ordering it and read the key sections. But no - it does not do what I want.

For example I want to be able to hook up the kids XBox360 and PS2 and have them switch between them as simply as possible. How hard can that be? So I hooked up the XBox using HDMI (like it recommends in the manual), hooked up the PS2 using RCA (that's all it has) and the projector using HDMI (like it recommends in the manual). Well the XBox works fine but no video from the PS2. It seems despite what it says in the manual (on page 24 where it tells you how to hook up ALL the components), and I quote, "You can watch the selected input image when you connect the HDMI TV OUT or MONITOR OUT jack to a TV". Which obviously means that analog audio/video components must get converted to digital for this statement to be true. But I got nothing. Now maybe Sony aren't very good at English and they didn't really mean you can connect HDMI *OR* MONITOR to your TV. What they really meant was you need to connect HDMI *AND* MONITOR to your TV. But I looked further through the manual to find the small print and sure enough there are exceptions like "An audio signal input to the HDMI IN jack is output from the SPEAKERS jacks and HDMI TV OUT jack. It does not output from any other audio jacks" and "Video signals input to the the HDMI IN jack can only be output from the HDMI TV OUT jack. The video input signals cannot be output from the VIDEO OUT jacks or MONITOR OUT jacks." BUT NOWHERE DOES IT SAY OR IMPLY THE FOLLOWING... "Video signals input to the the VIDEO IN jacks can only be output from the MONITOR OUT jack. The video input signals cannot be output from the HDMI TV OUT jack." I'm not asking for any fancy upconversion or upscaling like some of the higher end AVRs do, I just want my 480i analog signal to be passed through as a 480i HDMI signal. This is a $300 AVR - IT SHOULD BE ABLE TO THAT!!!

So now not only do I have to fork out for another 25' of cabling to get the analog video up to the projector on the ceiling I also have to teach the kids how to fiddle with the projector remote to choose the correct input instead of leaving it locked on HDMI. Plus if I put the projector on auto-input scan I believe that the HDCP link with the XBox is going to fail because the autoscan is too quick. Grrrrrr.

This AVR is pretty disappointing from other aspects too. My 10 year old DE835 is much more 21st century looking and has a motorized volume control with a red LED that actually moves, much easier to see in the dark than trying to read the tiny display from across the room. It has absolutely zero bling. My old one has a two color display, a cool animated LFE meter and a big blue bar that lights up when it's in digital mode. This model has nothing cool at all. It's really boring.Get more detail about Sony STR-DH710 7.1-channel Blu-ray Disc A/V Receiver with 6 HD Inputs (3 HDMI, 3 Component) (Black).