My Denon AVR-3300 needs repair, or should I replace it?

[tofferman]

My Denon AVR-3300 receiver (bought in 2001) makes a very high pitch sound intermittenly when watching a dvd. Sometimes the high pitch doesn't occur for a day or two, then on other days it occurs multiple times.

A local repair shop charges only $35 to look at it, but they have a backlog of at least two weeks. Shipping to Denon back in the Midwest is prohibitive and I have heard turnaround time can be months. Furthermore, I had the receiver looked at last year for the same problem by another repair shop and they couldn't replicate the pitch noise; thus no problem.

Would you try to get this issue fixed for good or does it make sense to upgrade the receiver? It is currently hooked up to a Toshiba 65H80 RPTV and both a Toshiba SD-6200 dvd player, and tomorrow a Toshiba HD-A1. I welcome your input.

[Brian Shannon]

Is the sound coming out of the speakers or out of the unit itself? While I would never stop someone from upgrading ;) it is a nice receiver.

[Shazam]

Get a new receiver. There's been some colossal upgrades with receivers since 2001. You won't regret it at all :)

[tofferman]

The sound comes out of the receiver, which is only used for movies and satellite.

I'm debating whether to fix it for several reasons. First, the money spent on repair could instead be spent on an upgrade. Second, if I fix it, maybe I only keep it for a year or two longer since I just purchased an HD-A1 and eventually will replace my Toshiba 65H80 RPTV (no HDMI inputs) as well. Third, the receiver will have no resale value for the most part, fixed or not, so the money spent is essentially buying time until I do upgrade. Fourth, the cost of fixing it.

If I were to replace it, does anyone have any recommendations in the $600-$1000 range? It sounds like I have already sold myself on not fixing it. :)

[Shazam]

Denon AVR-2807:

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-wS8kguqPA1r/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?g=10420&I=033AV2807B

[Spiky]

The biggest upgrade in receivers in quite a while is coming out later this year and in 2007. This is a rough time to buy new.

Test to see if the noise comes from it when using the analog inputs. Maybe the flaw is in the digital decoder, so you can let your DVD player do the decoding (the A1 should be quite good, maybe on par with the 3300) and avoid the noise for awhile. You'll want to hook up the A1 in this manner, anyway, to receive the best benefit from HDDVD.