Over night Woot Pioneer Receiver...Warm

Almost bought it... But lack of HDMI data on the display kinda killed it for me... Other than that seems like it would be a great little unit.
 
Wow, that's a great deal. I owned the 521 for a couple of weeks.
 
The lack of video upscaling makes this a no-go for me. I'll continue to use my 6 year old Denon.
 
You have to spend well over twice this much to get HDMI upscaling in a new receiver, FYI.
 
For $150 this is worth it. Video upscaling doesn't make THAT much of a difference. I own the VSX-30 which is nice, but if I had a needed a receiver on the cheap, I would definitely consider this.
 
Not bad but I always buy the Pioneer Elite line of receivers.
 
What is it with people and upscaling? What are you guys actually upscaling? Your PS3 and 360 don't look any better no matter what gets done with the 720p or less resolution used by all their games. So what are we talking about here? Does 720p HD cable look better upscaled? The Wii?

I own this receiver. It's fantastic. The only thing I'd want seems to require dropping $500+, and that's Audyssey something or the other to prevent movies and TV shows from doing that damn thing where the explosions and music are twice the volume of dialogue.
 
Matrices said:
What is it with people and upscaling? What are you guys actually upscaling? Your PS3 and 360 don't look any better no matter what gets done with the 720p or less resolution used by all their games. So what are we talking about here? Does 720p HD cable look better upscaled? The Wii?

I own this receiver. It's fantastic. The only thing I'd want seems to require dropping $500+, and that's Audyssey something or the other to prevent movies and TV shows from doing that damn thing where the explosions and music are twice the volume of dialogue.
Click to expand...

Upscaling does work. It takes an image of lesser quality, pulls it apart and fills in the missing pixels. Upscaled DVD's look better than non upscaled DVD's.
 
CruisD64 said:
Upscaling does work. It takes an image of lesser quality, pulls it apart and fills in the missing pixels. Upscaled DVD's look better than non upscaled DVD's.
Click to expand...

hmm so what your saying is that your willing to spend 500+ to upscale a DVD rather then buy it on Blue Ray?

I Couldn't give a rats ass less about up scaling. My media is about 90% net based & the other 10% BlueRay..

Not to mention that I never watched an upscaled DVD that looked better then the regular DVD..
 
CruisD64 said:
Upscaling does work. It takes an image of lesser quality, pulls it apart and fills in the missing pixels. Upscaled DVD's look better than non upscaled DVD's.
Click to expand...
TV's already upscale, and good TV's upscale even better. I know LG came out with a nice improved chip in 2010, Dual-XD i think they call it.

I'm sure there are curcumstances where it would be a handy feature for a receiver to have, but i bet there aren't many.
 
Matrices said:
What is it with people and upscaling? What are you guys actually upscaling? Your PS3 and 360 don't look any better no matter what gets done with the 720p or less resolution used by all their games. So what are we talking about here? Does 720p HD cable look better upscaled? The Wii?

I own this receiver. It's fantastic. The only thing I'd want seems to require dropping $500+, and that's Audyssey something or the other to prevent movies and TV shows from doing that damn thing where the explosions and music are twice the volume of dialogue.
Click to expand...

I don't do any upscaling, but I do upconversion. I have a Wii and a PS3 that use component, and it's helpful not to have to run a component cable to the TV.

This receiver does not do upconversion from analog to HDMI. So if you have any analog sources, you need to run an analog cable to your TV.
 
CruisD64 said:
Upscaling does work. It takes an image of lesser quality, pulls it apart and fills in the missing pixels. Upscaled DVD's look better than non upscaled DVD's.
Click to expand...

Your TV does this already. A 1080p TV necessarily has to scale any input to its native resolution. Feed it 480p and it upscales it to 1920x1080. The only reason to do upscaling outside the TV is if you have a video processor in a receiver or something else that is somehow much better than the scalar in your TV. This is highly unlikely, so it's generally preferable to just let your receiver pass all digital signals through as is.
 
kumquat said:
Your TV does this already. A 1080p TV necessarily has to scale any input to its native resolution. Feed it 480p and it upscales it to 1920x1080. The only reason to do upscaling outside the TV is if you have a video processor in a receiver or something else that is somehow much better than the scalar in your TV. This is highly unlikely, so it's generally preferable to just let your receiver pass all digital signals through as is.
Click to expand...

Yes, but some do it better than others. Differences may be small, but there are differences. My point was simply that.
 
kumquat said:
I don't do any upscaling, but I do upconversion. I have a Wii and a PS3 that use component, and it's helpful not to have to run a component cable to the TV.

This receiver does not do upconversion from analog to HDMI. So if you have any analog sources, you need to run an analog cable to your TV.
Click to expand...

This is what I really wanted. I believe that is what my pioneer vsx-9xx does at home (not sure exactly what the model number is, but it was a cheap $250 newegg deal I found from here a few years back).

I could care less who does the upscaling, my TV or the receiver. However, if I'm going to buy a new receiver to actually control the video rather than just the audio (currently all sources are fed optical to my receiver for just audio, all video straight to TV), it better have upconversion such that my wii and the receiver menus can be viewed over HDMI. No point in spending money to gain so little (and possibly go down in audio quality, that Denon I have was a pricey receiver when it first came out.

Why would I want to switch from one system when I use two remotes to control the inputs, to another system where I use two remotes to control the inptus.
 
Well you could enter the 21st century and get a remote that handles both ;)

But this receiver is only a smart purchase for someone who doesn't have a receiver, or doesn't have a receiver with HDMI switching (and either doesn't have HDMI or only has passthrough). It's a great deal on a good entry-level receiver, especially if you don't have any analog sources. This will go well with an XBox 360, a DVR, and a BD player with a bunch of Polk Monitor speakers.
 
The deal is now dead and a refurbished Roomba is in its place. Should we debate the merits of the Roomba versus a standard vac?
 
My mother purchased a roomba. It survived about a year until dog hair from a small, short haired, nearly bald dog killed it. Would not buy again.

My mother purchased a scooba. It worked twice, then started leaving absurd amounts of soap behind. Would not buy again.
 
kumquat said:
Well you could enter the 21st century and get a remote that handles both ;)

But this receiver is only a smart purchase for someone who doesn't have a receiver, or doesn't have a receiver with HDMI switching (and either doesn't have HDMI or only has passthrough). It's a great deal on a good entry-level receiver, especially if you don't have any analog sources. This will go well with an XBox 360, a DVR, and a BD player with a bunch of Polk Monitor speakers.
Click to expand...

I love my Harmony 900's at home. But I try to pretend I'm on a college budget at school.
 
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