This is one of Yamaha's newer mid class receiver. Yamaha introduces a new level of features for a really low price. You see all the major audio manufacturers following that model now, Onkyo, Pioneer, Denon, etc. For me, I'm not the snobby audio phile, but I have been around the block to recognize decent quality. This Yamaha is real easy to set up and use, but it can be tweaked out if you feel the need to do it. It puts out 665 watts total output. It does HDMI video upconversion and deinterlacing and it does pass it along to your HDMI display. The 2 HDMI inputs are fine because my TV has 3 HDMI inputs with custom TV settings for each input, including "Game Mode" for my Xbox input. Sending everything to the TV on one port defeats all this flexibility that is available. Now I do use my 2 HDMI inputs for TV and DVD. For the TV I do benefit from the HDMI "lip synch" feature and my DVD bitstreaming TrueHD audio streams. The Yamaha "scene" feature is great. Scene 1 has all the settings for DVD viewing, Scene 2 has them for Xbox and Scene 3 for plain ole TV. Scene 4 is open for now, I may make it for music only.
This receiver supports the latest surround sound from Blu-ray players and HD-DVD players. It supports formats like Dolby Digital Plus and DTS HD High Resolution and also lossless formats like Dolby TrueHD, which I am using now, and DTS-HD Master Audio. It has a really nice feature called Pure Direct. That is a special receiver mode that lets the signal to bypass all but the most basic audio circuitry to give the purest possible high-fidelity sound from all the sources including USB and HDMI inputs. The best thing about the receiver is that Yamaha did not skimp on the components. It has Burr-Brown parts inside, and also Schottky Barrier diodes, which I've researched are the best. Denon's high end receivers use them. I can't take advantage of the HD audio decoding just yet because my HTPC doesn't have the HDCP audio output yet. Blu-ray looks good being passed through this receiver. This is an all around excellent receiver.
