Yamaha RX V565 Home Theater Receiver

[arad]

The receiver is lighter than most receivers were used to. Noticeably lighter! We also noticed that the heat sinks are smaller which means the amplifiers are smaller and require less power. Also, there is no AC power outlet on the back of the unit so if you have something to plug into it you may want to consider a bigger power strip. The speaker wire jacks use spring clips on all but the mains. We're not criticizing its just economics. To get all this stuff into the unit Yamaha had to cut someplace. S-Video is gone too. But seriously, how many of you are actually connecting something to your HDTV via S-Video? On the front the only real change we saw is the color of the LEDs, they have gone to white instead of the amber that their previous receivers used. None of this matters if the receiver sounds good. More of that later...

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/reviews/2010/04/yamaha-rx-v565-home-theater-receiver.php]Read Review[/url]

[videograbber]

I have no problem with the Yamaha, or your review, but I have to respond to one comment you made.

> [i]But seriously, how many of you are actually connecting something to your HDTV via S-Video?[/i] <

I would think, potentially, quite a few people. Considering that for a long time, S-Video was the best we had. I find it a bit puzzling how quickly S-Video is being devalued and dropped. As well as casually accepted by reviewers such as yourselves.

Apparently no one has any S-VHS tapes they recorded over the years? If they did, mixing the luma and chroma down to composite, then separating them again later in some cheap Y/C separator before digitizing and upconverting for an HD display [b]would make no sense at all[/b]. That would just make them look considerably worse than they already are, and create chroma artifacts where there originally were none.

Upconverted analog SD content can actually look quite good. Certainly [b]far better than artifact-laden "100% digital" SD content[/b] from many sources (satellite and cable), that may eek out a bit-budget of a whopping 2 MBit/sec. But not if you degrade the source material before you even get started.

- Tim

[Dave3putt]

Yamaha is using the old trick for showing the power of this amp. 90 watts is only at 1kHz and even then at a distortion level of .9%. If it was rated at 20Hz-20kHz at .09%, as a better amp would be, it would probably only be able to put out half that power. Hence the light weight. Which is not to say it wouldn't fit fine with someones HT system. Power isn't everything, but I just wish Yamaha had not resorted to using the fine print.