[keoneflick]

The thing is, traditional receivers wanted to be the "brains" of home theater, switching video inputs, managing audio, turning everything on.

That role is no longer sensible when used with smart TVs/Apple TV boxes/Android TV boxes.

As a result, traditional receivers are relegated to be being audio decoders and amplifiers. Honestly, I think there's already more manufactured and lying around than the world really needs. It was inevitable that a few product lines would be consolidated.

[jauntywundrkind]

Really good call out, that the TV now often is the center of the AV experience, where-as the "receiver" (and amplifier) used to be driving the show.

I really really wish there were digital audio decoder/processors available. It sucks so bad that you either buy a semi affordable consumer amplifier with 7.2.2 Dolby Atmos out and ok amplification, or if you want to step up you need a $4000+ processor whose only real job is decoding Dolby formats & turning them into analog outs for amplification. And there's almost no market, just a couple odd products like Emotiva's XMC-2: https://emotiva.com/products/xmc-2-plus-16-channel-9-1-6-dis...

Opener standards like DTS would hopefully have some remedy here but if the source material isn't available it hardly matters. Hoping for actual open standards Immersive Audio Model and Format (iamf) and the Eclipsa Audio Format profiles atop that maybe some day give us good spatial audio that an rpi and multichannel sound out board can help us free ourselves from this vile civilization-scale Dolby tarpit with. https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/introducing-eclips...

[jeffbee]

Licensing is definitely strangling the market for Atmos decoders. If you have particular requirements you can always do it with ~$2k in Dolby software licenses and also ~$2k in converters. You cannot, unfortunately, DIY hardware for Atmos without an HDCP license. If you have one of those you can actually DIY something around a DSP like the ones Analog Devices sells preloaded with the IP. Then again if you have those kinds of resources you probably already work for Harman or something.

[hedora]

Gee, look what fell out of the back of a truck:

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/HDMI-1-4-Splitter-1-i...

$25 minimum order (for ten) + shipping and tariffs. No idea if these work, but they’re the top internet hit. The metadata says they do.

[jeffbee]

Yes but ADI won't even sell you the DSP I mentioned unless you produce your HDCP license.

[iwontberude]

Whenever I try to use these they don’t work with the latest hardware

[aidenn0]

Someone (Monoprice I think?) sells a box that downgrades HDCP; this is actually allowed in the HDCP agreement. Run the signal through that first.

[Duwensatzaj]

MiniDSP? https://www.minidsp.com/

I used their stuff for a four-speaker audio setup but they do affordable home theater devices as well.

[drodgers]

They don't do any of the Dolby decoding and multi-channel mixing. Their closest product is the miniDSP Flex HT which is really about applying EQ to a bunch of channels (only 8, aka 7.1 or 5.2.1) after they've been decoded by an upstream receiver. It's pretty niche.

[bob1029]

I use the miniDSP 2x4 in my office right now to split the LFE and filter out the room modes.

It's amazing the difference you can make with a basic DSP engine and a tape measure.

[EnPissant]

MiniDSP doesn't do any bitstream decoding.

[tzs]

Any article posted here about smart TVs draws a large number of comments about limitations and annoyances of smart TV platforms.

90+% of the things people complain about would no longer be a problem if they got a traditional A/V receiver, plugged all their sources such as streaming boxes and game consoles into the receiver, and just used the smart TV as a monitor (and as a tuner if they watch OTA television).

Until that is no longer the case there will be a role for traditional A/V receivers.

[jwr]

> 90+% of the things people complain about would no longer be a problem if they got a traditional A/V receiver, plugged all their sources such as streaming boxes and game consoles into the receiver, and just used the smart TV as a monitor (and as a tuner if they watch OTA television).

The problem there is the terrible UI of those A/V receivers, designed by committee that upholds long-standing traditions. It takes a lot of fussing with the complicated remote to get to where you want, which is perhaps fine for geeks, but annoying in a family setup, where all household members would like to know how to watch Netflix.

BTW, these traditions are ridiculous: as an example, my DENON receiver has two monstrous knobs on the front, like most AV receivers. The one on the left I will never use in its entire lifetime: it is for manually sequentially switching input sources, which nobody does anymore. And yet they still place it as the most prominent feature/control on the front panel.

The buttons that I'd like to use are small, black-on-black with dark gray labeling in 8pt type, so basically impossible to use unless you use a magnifying glass and a flashlight.

[smackeyacky]

The Harmony remotes used to solve this problem - I am dreading the day my old Harmony One dies.

[jwr]

Kind of — Harmony remotes still had way too many buttons, you had to keep them pointed at the thing being controlled for the entire duration of a sequence, things could get desynced, and we shall not mention the horrible software, right?

[mvanbaak]

this is true for the IR based harmony remotes. But they also have hub based systems where the hub blasts the commands (over IR or BT) and the remote talks to the hub using RF or BT. No need to point at things.

[dfex]

Oh man - I used to have a Harmony remote and thought it was the best thing ever for my multi-vendor AV setup...

...then the AppleTV was released, with a remote that made the Harmony look like the console of a nuclear power plant by comparison, and I never went back

[alabastervlog]

Seconded, I’m happy with my Denon (especially because I got it cheap) but only because I rarely touch it. The front panel design is demented.

[anton-c]

My receiver(amplifier is a better name for its job) is mounted sideways on l-brackets so the power and volume knob, the only things that sometimes get touched, are at the top within reach. I do audio work but once a receiver is set up I don't mess with it. So easy for consumers to mess things up.

[timc3]

Yeah I agree. There are maybe 6 buttons used regularly on mine. Everything else is not needed for the family day to day.

[keoneflick]

You can have the TV still be a dumb monitor by using a TV box, but handle the switching of inputs if you have more than one input.

The problem is that as video technology has advanced, it makes less and less sense to pay for video processing technology on a receiver. Your new TV supports HDMI 2.1 with 120hz and VRR for your new PS5.

Does your receiver? Are you willing to spend $1000 to upgrade your receiver to simply correctly pass through that video signal, with little meaningful audio upgrade?

[timc3]

But a lot only support that on 2 ports (though admittedly how many devices would you have doing that).

I think you hit the only problem I have with receivers being the upgrade of them as new versions of HDMI come out.

[hedora]

I don’t understand what an A/V receiver is for. Our setup:

- An old LCD TV with 4(?) HDMI inputs and a few legacy ports.

- linux box with hdmi out

- apple tv with hdmi out

- console with hdmi out

- line out cable from TV to 1970’s receiver’s line in.

- line out from sonos to another line in on the receiver.

- roof antenna, with a Y to the TV and receiver

- turntable

- two extremely nice speakers

(Before someone asks, the TV has some sort of multichannel digital audio out. I don’t care. If I did, that’d give me surround sound. Similarly, I could get a subwoofer if I wanted.)

This is completely fine. The apple tv and console auto-switch the tv to their output, and sync the power buttons. The linux box doesn’t, but probably could if I decided to RTFM. The apple tv can be controlled with the tv remote, but its native remote is nicer. We only use the TV remote to access linux.

We only touch the receiver to switch between TV, turntable, sonos and radio.

How would an A/V receiver possibly improve this? (Note: I want the analog radio and record player with their nice mechanical switches and warm FM sound, and will run the sonos s1 app until the cloud side of it dies.)

[alabastervlog]

It’s mainly useful for getting good surround. If you don’t care about that, sure, not really necessary. That’s like the whole point of it.

Side benefits include:

- Adding more ports to often port-starved TVs or projectors.

- Providing alternative port-switching interface if you hate your TV’s UI and want something simpler.

- An organizational aid—you can put all your stuff somewhere away from the TV, and all that needs to reach it is a single HDMI cable. This can create interesting room layout options that are otherwise impractical.

All of these can also be accomplished by a simple HDMI port switch, but still, it’s handy.

[hedora]

We just ran a wider conduit through the wall It has 4 hdmi cables, a usb extension cord and tv coax in it. (Didn’t bother with Ethernet the closet has a wifi access point in it.)

The appletv is in the closet, but the other devices don’t make sense there. The linux box is about as big as a decent USB hub, and has a few wired game controllers plugged into it. The console is a switch, and going into the closet is too much trouble. I could put the sonos in the closet, but the play/mute button on it is too convenient when I don’t have a phone handy. The other stuff is self explanatory.

Can you not get a surround sound audio receiver/amp anymore? The digital out on the tv presumably would feed it. I had an old one like that, but it died.

[toast0]

> Can you not get a surround sound audio receiver/amp anymore?

No, not really. If you want surround sound audio, you probably want it over HDMI, and then they may as well have video features too.

But, if you have enough ports on your TV, and it doesn't do dumb things, and eARC works, and the TV doesn't forget it's attached to the receiver... You can still plug in everything to the TV, and you don't have to uss the receiver to switch inputs. I typically run the movie disc players through the receiver, because they have high bitrate audio, and tvs like to mess that up.

[timc3]

Thats fine if you are happy with it, does the job no problem.

Its just I wouldn't want the TV doing the switching because you are still managing two remotes for that and I dont want the wiring to the TV, I would want more speakers and some basic room eq, delay correction and subwoofer management. And I always end up with more devices. I also want Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.

My receiver does everything yours does and more, and the TV auto switches on and off but I am also been into this stuff for years.

[lttlrck]

I would guess that many people listen to more music than watch TV or movies. They might not want the TV on all the time. So a A/V receiver can make a lot of sense for them.

Plus AV receivers can consolidate all the connections so there is only one run to the TV. This could be done with an HDMI switch if you can find one that integrates as well as a receiver, with similar number of inputs and isn't a large fraction of the cost.

Plus many (most?) very nice speakers need an external amplifier. Once you look at the cost of a bare bones amp, an A/V receiver with everything else they offer makes a ton of sense. Even for two channels.

[hedora]

That’s what the sonos is for in this setup. If we eliminated it, I’d probably just put a VM with similar software on it on the linux box and give it access to linux’s line out. (A raspberry pi would work, but might need a better dac and it takes more cabinet space than a vm on an existing machine.)

[jeffbee]

I would say my greatest suspicion about such a setup would be that your TV is doing a poor job of decoding surround streams into sensible 2-channel downmixes. However, if you're happy with it, that's all that matters.

[hedora]

The AppleTV and Linux do the downmix (and are probably both state of the art at it.)

The console might be suboptimal, but it knows the TV is in 2 channel mode, so it it’s emitting surround encoded signal, that’s just dumb.

[iancmceachern]

It's for surround sound, really good surround sound you can't get from a soundboard. Once you go there you can't go back. It totally changes the experience. It has to be good, 7 channel surround with good speakers all around and audessy etc.

[ericghildyal]

The problem isn't the number of boxes plugged in, its that the TV has its own OS and built-in apps that people want to use that doesn't work with anything outside the TV.

I don't think too many people have, for example, a Samsung TV and a Firestick and use the 2 interchangeably for different apps.

I had this problem until the Samsung interface got too unbearably slow (6 year old tv), so I just bought a Google TV and that goes through my receiver's HDMI in port. Before this update, I was using optical out from the TV into my receiver, but the quality was noticeably degraded. I'm lucky I also don't use the radio function or a record player since that would just add to the chaos.

[bombcar]

eARC or whatever it is really changed this. I don't need a receiver with buttons anymore, I just need one that handles eARC gracefully.

We're about five years away from "no remotes" anymore, imo. As it is I only need to find the TV remote when something goes really wonky - and even then I can reset it by using the smart app to power cycle the outlet ;)

[mikepurvis]

For a wall-mounted TV, it's still pretty essential to get a single cable run to it, vs needing to plug in each device individually. That said, it's curious how the multiplexing and audio amp functionality ended up in the same box.

Really what it should be is:

- a "remote" multiplexer comes in the box with my TV. It speaks HDMI/CEC to the TV telling it what input is active so that the TV's UI can reflect that and it can do things like switch between movie and game mode picture tuning.

- the former AVR should become a purely eARC box with no buttons, not even a power button— it comes on on command of the TV, and adjusts its amplification volume according to the same eARC signals that a soundbar uses. Any initial calibration or speaker setup is done via a single-use phone app.

[tass]

Monoprice make a HDMI switch that does a lot of this. No metadata for game mode, etc. as far as I know but I have:

TV

Apple TV on earc connection (HomePods for sound)

Blackbird switch with all other devices.

It can automatically switch between everything, but also has an IR remote for selecting an input.

[mikepurvis]

I've had bad experiences in the past with autodetecting switches, especially that tiny square one. But I should give this a shot— it would be awfully nice to just pipe everything directly to the TV and have the AVR in eARC-only mode.

[Arainach]

>Any initial calibration or speaker setup is done via a single-use phone app.

Please no. No more phone apps that are unmaintained, barely work in the first place, and don't work at all within 2 years or when the vendor goes bankrupt. Things should be physical buttons and work offline.

[mitthrowaway2]

Isn't it done this way because your TV might not be the only thing that wants to use your nice speakers?

[mikepurvis]

I guess that's true too, certainly in a living room setting if you've still got a vinyl player or whatever— but modern TVs have the audio streaming apps of course, plus they can be a cast target for anything on your phone.

Maybe it also matters in a home theatre that's oriented around a projector rather than TV.

[hedora]

Our bargain basement projector (for a project; it was under $100) has more smart app bs on it than the TV.

I get the impression everyone eventually settles on a roku ($35, but full of spam) AppleTV (a bit over $100; better in all ways), or maybe goes with the google thing.

All of those cost < 10% the price of upgrading a TV, and all of our TVs have outlasted the (incredibly shitty) software they were bundled with.

[kyriakos]

eARC is amazing tech - when it works.

I have a recent top of the line Samsung TV, and last year's 5.1 Samsung soundbar and even though both components are from the same brand there are some very frustrating times eARC fails. The rest of the time it works like magic.

[dylan604]

I often get weird issues using the ARC, and have never tracked it down. I don't know if it is the audio device of the TV. Randomly, the audio will get all distorted for a random amount of time, and then suddenly it snaps back to normal. I never looked into the format to see if there's some sort of re-sync signal sent periodically that is part of ARC, but that would make sense to me based on observed behavior. When the audio gets weird, it's sounds like some sort of sample rate issue as the sound changes pitch, plays distorted, and goes out of sync with the video.

My TV and audio equipment happen to have an optical connection and after switching to that away from ARC, the issue has gone away.

[Marsymars]

I had perfectly working eARC for over a year until I started getting random audio dropouts. After months, I figured out they were due to my Wii U coming out of standby and checking for updates on a different HDMI port. I think it worked fine before a firmware update to either my TV or my soundbar. Works fine again after disabling the Wii U's background updates.

[bombcar]

There's a reason my tv was named "Slamsung" for awhile, and I didn't cry or yell at all when a kid put a toy through it. Thing was an absolute steaming pile of barely usable crap, so I went back to Vizio.

[insane_dreamer]

Yes, but vinyl is making a strong comeback, and with that comes the need for traditional receivers. Even CDs are making a comeback -- as many indie artists publish CDs (and some do vinyl), which implies demand for standalone CD players with a receiver (like those made by the Denon, Onkyo, etc.)

I have a HomePod in my living room and it gets used, but I also have a traditional receiver hooked up to my external speakers, with a turntable and CD player plugged into the receiver.

[SoleilAbsolu]

I was going to say something similar - I think there will still be some market for high-quality audio preamp/receiver/mixer-type devices that have actual EQ/tone controls rather than endless menus, and focus on actual fidelity over features. Sony, Onkyo, Sansui & Yamaha are brands I've trusted for this over the years.

[baq]

‘The two things which brought me to vinyl is the expense and the inconvenience.’

[timc3]

If you are really into AV they are more important than ever.

Yes at first glance a TV does the switching, and the rest. But a modern receiver can be better. Better switching, better ability to handle multiple speakers ( particularly for Dolby Atmos ) including Room EQ. Alot of TVs only have 2 HDMI ports with all the latest features.

[al_borland]

This is one of the things that kept me from getting a proper home theater setup. It always seemed like more complexity than I wanted under my TV. I could do it, but I simply objected to the idea. Not to mention, I like for someone to be able to come to my house and use my TV without taking a class first.

[keoneflick]

Yes, definitely had that experience growing up of going over to someone's house and being unable to operate the very complex tower of black boxes. Could not agree more.

[baq]

> It always seemed like more complexity than I wanted under my TV.

the receiver doesn't need to be under the TV. it can sit in a basement. the question is if you really want to have proper sound or it's only a nice to have.

> use my TV without taking a class first

this is not an issue at all. HDMI ARC handles this.

[bliteben]

I got one recently for a room that was already wired with speakers, and man the ability to control the volume on Apple TV remote app on your phone is amazing. For whatever reason none of my other Apple TV's will allow that (could be the tv's fault, but obviously somewhere along the line they at least expect a speaker bar). I'm sure it's a fault of the HDMI spec somewhere that you can't easily change the volume on the tv itself but you can on downstream devices.

[al_borland]

I have an AppleTV on 2 different TVs and it works to change the volume on both of them.

Sometimes it stops working, but a reboot of the remote fixes it. The idea that I need to reboot a remote hurts my soul a little, but at least it works. Hold the TV and Volume Down buttons until the LED on the Apple TV turns off. Wait a bit and you’ll see a notice that it disconnects. Wait a while longer and press a button (volume seems safest) and it will connect again.

There are also some settings around the remote and volume. It can be set to use HDMI, the TV’s IR, and there is a learn option. The TV I’m currently on is using the IR direct to the TV… I guess this is why it doesn’t work when I try to use the app, but I almost never use that anyway.

[bliteben]

The difference is with the app. With the Apple Remote it works fine, but in the app it only works with HDMI magic (I'm sure some tv's allow you to use the HDMI magic with no sound bar / receiver)

[skydhash]

I have a somewhat cheap Denon for 5.1 audio and after the initial sound setup, I've never needed to touch the settings other for adjusting the subwoofer volume. It's mostly Apple TV -> AVR -> TV, but I got other inputs like a PS4 and a PC for music. And it has Airplay, Bluetooth and Spotify Connect for anyone that wants to play from their phone.

There's no need for a super-complicated setup for good sound.

[anton-c]

When non-tech people(ie my folks) set one up, you end up with the 3 remote thing for a cable box, receiver, and streaming stuff. It's real wild - I just let them turn stuff on when I'm over there.

I do audio work but they took my brothers recommendation on the home theater so I'm a bit 'you made your bed' about it haha.

[skydhash]

It's three remotes (TV, Apple box, AVR), but if you setup HDMI-CEC, it quickly becomes one (the Apple box). It's not like you're fiddling with the others' settings every day.

[anton-c]

That sounds well set up. My mom's flaw is she's actually good at troubleshooting and tech so finds the weird solutions instead of addressing the actual problem lol