A sometimes overlooked element to a perfect home theater is the perfect sound system to accompany your viewing experience. While much attention has been given to which TV will offer the clearest picture, the brightest views, and the deepest colors, less attention seems to be paid to the sound quality that will accompany that visual experience. Some people are content to just have their standard television produce the audio for the image presented on the screen, but those people who are truly in the market for a true home theater experience know that this will never happen satisfactorily without high quality surround sound, and one of the first components that you will need when building that perfect audio setup is a receiver.

Since HDMI has become so popular it has been widely replacing the toslink and coaxial cables that most of us are very familiar with. When you are getting ready to purchase a new HDMI receiver you will want to look for a few things that you should consider essential before spending your hard earned cash. One of the most important things to consider are the number of inputs that your new HDMI receiver has. You will likely want a receiver that has at least two but preferably four HDMI inputs and two HDMI outputs. You will also want to make sure that the receiver has enough coaxial and component inputs as well.

Look to purchase a receiver of the highest quality that you can afford. Receivers are not the place that you want to “cheap out” and get an inferior product. If you purchase a low quality receiver you can reasonably expect that the audio and image quality of your home theater system will be compromised negatively. I would suggest that you look to spend at least in the middle hundreds, $400-$600, on the lower end to get a good receiver. When you purchase a receiver also check to make sure that the model you select is up to date in terms of audio decoding. You would be better served getting a HDMI receiver that will handle audio decoding as opposed to purchasing a passthrough receiver that will put the audio decoding on your video player of choice.

Another thing to look for is upconversion and cross conversion which will allow you to cut out the bulk of the cables going in and out of your receiver to and from other components. This is more of an optional consideration but it may be well worth the extra money if you don’t want to set up or go through a ton of wires when you are making any adjustments or setting up your home theater system.

In short don’t skimp when purchasing your HDMI receiver. A good, high quality receiver hooked up to superb surround sound speakers will make you realize what you were missing when you were merely listening to the audio from your television. You won’t regret spending some extra money for that real home theater experience when purchasing your receiver.

Author Bio: Information in this article about Home Theater Installation provided by leading Home Theater Raleigh company.

Category: Computers and Technology
Keywords: hdmi receiver, home theater, quality receiver, hdmi outputs