Good to hear. I picked the base model. I was wanting a HDMI receiver, but I'm going to wait a few months and see how this one does. I'm no audiophile, so listening to DD+ or full bit rate DTS sounds just fine to me. I'm upgrading from a 6 year old JVC. It's been great, but I want to see if the Denon works better with the A1.

I'm going to find out this weekend for sure. However, if I can get the AR-987 for $550 I will order one. Despite the fact that the remote on the 987 looks like a dinky $5 wal-mart remote.

My new Denon receiver is on the FedEx truck and will be delivered today. I hope this thing gets along with my A1. My previous receiver only had DD/DTS decoders. Will I notice a difference with the EX and DTS-ES decoding? I have plenty of dvds to try out with those mixes but also We Were Soldiers has a DD EX mix on the HD DVD that I'm anxious to hear.

I'm contemplating picking up the Pioneer Elite VSX-84TSXi - http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pn...985784,00.html and was wondering if there is any reason I shouldn't?

it has 4 HDMI inputs, 7 composite ins, 5 s-vid ins, 3 component ins, 140W x 7, 7 digital inputs(5 optical + 2 coax), 8 channel multi in and 8 channel preouts, it does upconversion through HDMI and more.

I have a Pioneer VSX1015TX, which I was using before updating to my new Sony model. It was an awsome reciever especially with the price point it had. With the experience I have had with my Pioneer reciever and with what I have read on the net regarding thier Elite line, You should absolutly feel no hesitation when purchasing those models. They are decked out with inputs for future expansion and sound great. Just do some searches on the net and read some of the feedback from people with that current model. I myself was thinking of updated to the Eite line and did a lot of reading on it. They are awsome hands down so purchase away!! If I didnt get such an amazing deal on a basically brand new Sony reciever I would have gone that route by the end of the year, as it is I am now with Sony until its time to buy again :-)

PS...

Chris, if you have the money for a Pioneer Elite, go for it. IMO, they're the only receivers that consistently rival Denon's.

I dug out my old Denon AVR-1507 for my move, and was very happy to see that it had 5.1 analog inputs. I was afraid I was going to have to buy a new receiver for the interim period of the move.

Just out of curiosity does anyone else here have a stack of aged audio video equipment somewhere in thier house? I just went into my storage room to find my Monster Sub cable and I happened to glance over at the section of the room that had all my old equipment which my fiance was kind enough to stack all of them up all neatly for me and was blown away. I didnt realize how much crap I have from the past that has just accumulated and I never got around to trying to sell. I have 3 recievers, a dual tape deck, 2 VHS machines, 3 old DVD players, a very cool digital EQ that used to be the highlight of my stereo system (I wonder if this would still be of any use?) along with like 3 different sets of old speakers. I need to get rid of this crap, funny thing is that all of it is in fully 100% working order. I always end up upgrading well before a piece of equipment gives out.

PS..

I also have 2 receivers, 2 VHS decks, and 1 old DVD player. I gave away 2 old DVD players, 1 cool digital EQ, 1 VHS deck, and 2 sets of speakers, and 2 TVs. But this is nothing compared to my computer junk and parts pile...

lol, dont even get me started on the computer stuff. I am currently up to 5 Apple computers that I currently use including 4 different scanners, 3 different photo printers and over 12 external hard drives spaced out amongst them. Also have a few Iomega drives, zip drives and misc input devices like drawing tablets etc.. I have a room that is strictly dedicated to my computers and my fiance swears its going to start a fire and burn our house down from all of the cords plugged in. This is the equpment that is in use and not incuding the stuff that is out of date like old CDRW drives, old DVD drives, old printers etc. I have 6 old epson scanners that are in perfect working order just like my AV equipment. The technology kept improving so fast over the last 6 years that I upgraded every year. What needs to happen is I really need to sell this crap. I am sure alot of it would sell on eBay as most of it is really good gear.

Anyone need a scanner or some old AV gear, lol.

By the way what model digital EQ do you have? does it have a huge digital readout face where words stream across from left to right? I used to love this thing. You could start a test program and it would go through all of the different types of settings you could use while a song was playing and it would just warp the thing out of control. Was very cool back in the day. Its actually really not that old, maybe 5 years and was like 450.00 when I got it. Its still in perfect working condition and I have wondered from time to time if my system would actually benefit from me hooking it up again.

PS...

thanks for the replies. my current receiver is a Pioneer VSX1014 which is why I was looking at the Elite line. I have been doing the "cheap" upgrade(receivers in the $350.00 range) every few yrs. and figured it's time I step it up a notch.

of course this just means that I'll have to upgrade my speakers now too if I get this receiver which my wife will just love. ;)

something I just thought of - if you have both an HD-DVD player and a BD player with only 1 set of analog ins, what is the best way to connect in order to take full advantage of the new surround formats?

should I go HDMI for my XA1 and analog for the Panasonic?

(you know, I just had a déjà vu moment in asking this. did I ask this before?)

I'd go with HDMI for the Panny and analog for the Toshiba for now. Once Panny offers the TrueHD/DTS-HD MA firmware update, then you can re-evaluate.

Excuse me if I sound uneducated on this here, because I am, but are there are receivers that have HDMI inputs but do not pass audio? My friend just got a new Pioneer VSX-1016TXV, and he swears by the thing. He's almost got me convinced to get one, but when I asked him how the HDMI connections were doing, he said that this unit doesn't pass the sound, only the video. He said that's what it said in his manual, so he doesn't think it's busted or anything. If that's true, what the hell is the point of HDMI over DVI? I was just about to put an order in for this and now I'm all confused. I know to get TruHD out of my HD-DVD player (without using the analogs) I need to have an HDMI receiver. Little help here please, this is now driving me nuts.

I believe that many recievers do not pass audio over HDMI as most people would not need it too. If you are sending audio to the reciever you want it to proccess and/or play the sound not send it to the TV. The advantage of HDMi over DVI is that many people have HD TV's but no reciever, so they can connect their player to their TV with one cable and get audio and video.

You should be fine with that reciever. I don't see why you would need to pass that adio just accept it.

My fault, I explained that poorly I think. For example, he's got an HD-DVD player as well. So I would have assumed that hooking up the HD-DVD player to one of the HDMI inputs would be the only connection necessary for both sound and video through the receiver for that input. Instead, he's got it hooked up through HDMI for the video and optical for the sound (which we'll be changing to analogs this weekend). And maybe I'm just confused here, but I was under the impression that an HDMI receiver could play TruHD (the reason I'm most interested in upgrading my old Panasonic) through the HDMI connection. Not true? Does the receiver need to explicitly state that it can accept audio and video through HDMI?

When XavierMike said it didn't "pass audio," he meant that the receiver would accept the audio, but not output the signal with the audio. There would be no need to, since the receiver would take the full signal, separate the audio and decode it, and then send the video to your display.

^^^Exactly, no reciever on the market can decode TrueHD yet. Personally, if you have an A1 and aren't planning on getting the A2 any time soon, there is no advantage with an HDMI equiped reciever as long as it has 5.1 inputs.

I have a GC for Best Buy. If I go to a Best Buy with a Magnolia in it, and purchase a Denon receiver, can I use the GC? or does Magnolia have their own separate system?

You might try calling them and ask.

A quick update... I'm an impatient man, found the Denon AVR-887 today at RC Willey. They were having a pretty good sale, picked it up with a 5 year PRP and tax for $680. Very excited, should get it tomorrow.

Braves, your Denon is two models up from the one I have. That should sound utterly awesome.

Glad to hear the good reviews, I'm almost too excited for words. It's all coming together now, 50" Sony SXRD TV with the HD-DVD player playing on the Denon 887 receiver. But what this did make me realize is how gravely I need new speakers. The old Onkyos have done well by me, but I think it's time to start buttering the wife up about some new Xmas floorstanding speakers. Might be a hard sell with the PS3 I'm looking for as well though... :)

ps. Good work Suprmallet on the couple reviews I saw you posted recently. You actually made me throw Space Cowboys on my netflix list just to see how good it looks, I had no intention of ever watching that previously.

Thanks! I was definitely impressed by how good Space Cowboys looked.

As for speakers, I could stand for an upgrade as well. My main receiver, the Pioneer Elite VSX-55TXi, could easily overwhelm all of my speakers if I really cranked it.

Holy crap, I just want to say to anybody looking for a receiver around $700, this Denon AVR-887 is freaking fantastic. It upconverts through HDMI great, it's a breeze to hook up, and makes my old panny receiver sound like it should have been put out to pasture long ago. The TruHD from HD-DVD analogs is the best sound I have ever heard in a home theater setting, and the rest of the optical inputs sound at least twice as good as they did before.

The only downside that I saw this weekend is that the HDMI converting wasn't compatible with my Motorola cable box, so I had to send that through component. No big deal given how much CableOne compresses the hell out of the signal anyway.

It also works flawlessly with my harmony remote, all of the original remote functions (and then some it seems like). Awesome machine, I would highly recommend it to anybody looking in that range after my initial impressions.