There were a handful of reasons why I wanted to get a new TV for the basement theater, but the number one reason was so that I could maximize the video quality for movies and games. My old plasma TV produced a nice high-def picture, but couldn't do 4K or variable refresh rates or any of the other newer technologies that modern content uses. Oddly, it could produce a 3D picture which was useless. A sign of the times. One of the consequences of this modern technology is that all of your components have to be on the same page in terms of their capabilities. Because of this I ran into a bit of a roadblock in my Operation TV Swap project: My AV receiver.
I've had a love/hate relationship with HDMI. On the one hand, being able to carry audio and video through the same cable greatly simplifies your setup. On the other hand, utilizing one cable for both audio and video limits your ability to route the signals to various devices. With HDMI, you're forced to connect component A to B, and if a third component is needed, the audio/video feed has to be passed from the second component. This design is where you can get into trouble if one of your components is not up to date. In HDMI's defense, they frequently update their standards to be able to handle more complicated setups and higher quality audio and video. But again, all of your components have to be updated or you will be at the mercy of the weakest link in the system.
Without getting too much into the technical weeds, there were a couple of HDMI technologies that caused me trouble: HDMI 2.1 and eARC. When hooking up a surround sound system, there are two main ways to do it. The way I do it (Option A) is to run all of the AV feeds to the AV receiver, and then pass the video feed to the TV. The other way to do it (Option B) is to run all of the AV feeds directly to the TV, then pass the audio feed to the AV receiver. In an Option A setup, in order to pass along 4K with a variable refresh rate up to 120 hz (for the Playstation 5), you have to have an HDMI 2.1 setup. My old receiver did not support 2.1, only HDMI 2.0. I could get around this issue by using an Option B setup and directly connecting the Playstation to the TV. However, in this setup, in order to pass uncompressed surround sound audio, including spatial audio like Dolby Atmos, you have to have an eARC connection. My old receiver did not support eARC, it only supported ARC. So regardless of which setup I used, I was going to sacrifice either video or audio quality. I felt like my arm was twisted, forcing me to buy a new receiver. Considering the main goal of this project was to maximize my video quality, I went ahead and included a new receiver as part of the project. It wasn't necessarily something I was looking forward to replacing, but deemed it necessary for the project to be a success.
My previous receiver was an Onkyo that I liked quite a bit. I purchased it in 2015, and I think it was a 2014 model, so to be fair it was pushing 10 years old. I picked out about 6 models from different brands, all of which had essentially identical features and were within $200 of each other's price. An Onkyo I was looking at went on sale for $799 and I decided to buy it. As I mentioned, I liked my previous Onkyo, and Onkyo works directly with Klipsch to optimize speaker settings, a feature that I like as well that is unique to the brand.
Despite feeling somewhat forced to upgrade my AV receiver before I wanted to, I'm actually quite happy with the results. I think the new receiver handles surround sound better than the old one. It also has an updated menu system and better integration with wi-fi streaming and other updated features. Plus, it has been successful at passing 4K video from the Playstation to the TV at 120 hz, so I am able to maximize the Playstation's video output.
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