Best 4K HDR AVR (Audio Video Receivers) for Consoles [2017-2019]

[London Geezer]

Coming into the thread to call it pointless, after not having read or understood the discussion, is pointless.

 

[tuna]

The discussion went like this.

1. BRiT asked if any receivers were confirmed with full HDMI 2.1 support.
2. London-boy said that maybe this isn't a big deal as long as the receiver supports eARC as this would allow you to connect your video devices to the TV directly and then pass the audio along to the receiver over an HDMI connection between the two with no loss of quality.
3. I agreed, with the caveat that if you have enough devices you may end up being limited by the number of HDMI inputs on the TV and proceeded to list a plausible configuration, for a gaming enthusiast, that would require a TV with 5 HDMI inputs to service if your setup is configured this way. Best Buy has 213 4K TVs listed for sale on their website, of those, 7 have 5 HDMI inputs.

Get it now?

You wrote: "If I end up with Scarlett, PS5, an AVR and my PC connected to the TV, what happens if I want to also connect a future Chromecast/Roku/<insert streaming box here> down the road? Needing 5 HDMI inputs is going to limit your choices."

I this case you need 4 HDMI 2.1 inputs on the TV. Your connections will look like this:

TV: AVR, PS5, Scarlett and PC
AVR: Chromecast/Roku/other video streamer

 

[BRiT]

That's nearly the worst setup for easier user control. You would have to switch TV to HDMI AVR Input and then switch AVR to the Roku/Chromecast/Other HDMI. A lot easier being able to only manage switching on 1 device.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

That's nearly the worst setup for easier user control. You would have to switch TV to HDMI AVR Input and then switch AVR to the Roku/Chromecast/Other HDMI. A lot easier being able to only manage switching on 1 device.

It's worse, certainly, but I "think" his point was that you don't necessarily NEED a TV with a boatload of HDMI inputs. You can work around the limitation and still have full functionality.

However, it's also true that it'd be far more convenient, and to an extent future proof, to just have everything connected to the TV.

Regards,
SB

 

[mrcorbo]

You wrote: "If I end up with Scarlett, PS5, an AVR and my PC connected to the TV, what happens if I want to also connect a future Chromecast/Roku/<insert streaming box here> down the road? Needing 5 HDMI inputs is going to limit your choices."

I this case you need 4 HDMI 2.1 inputs on the TV. Your connections will look like this:

TV: AVR, PS5, Scarlett and PC
AVR: Chromecast/Roku/other video streamer

I'm not talking about a current Chromecast/Roku I'm talking about a future one that will leverage one or more HDMI 2.1 features that is not supported on the AVR (dynamic HDR for example).

All that said, if I had to get an AVR now, as long as it had eARC, I wouldn't feel too bad about it. My example is a corner case and it is always possible to work around a lack of inputs with an active switch (at the expense of system operation being a bit more clunky and the physical wiring being less clean).