I'm in the process of upgrading my home theater system. I've just upgraded to HD and therefore have introduced a bunch of component/HDMI devices to my system. My receiver, unfortunately, is too old to have any of those inputs. I'm looking for suggestions on a receiver. I'm leaning towards the Sony STR-DG1000 so far (I still need to confirm with Sony that it meets my requirements).
I'm hoping to spend about $500-$600 (actual street price, not the MSRP). I need at least 2 HDMI inputs (must be able to support 1080p). 3 HDMI's would be ideal, but I'm doubtful I'll find that in my price range. Also, the HDMI needs to support DVI meaning, if I have an HDMI + toslink, I want that to work rather than only HDMI that has sound integrated (stupid settop doesn't have HDMI, only DVI so I'm using an adapter).
I need Dolby 7.1 (I'd like it to also support 6.1 - can someone explain to me how that works with speaker setup since the speaker configurations are different for 7.1 and 6.1?)
I need at least 6 inputs. Ideally, the inputs will allow me to select whatever digital audio cable and video cable I want. Meaning, I have my Wii which uses component video but just left/right audio, my STB which uses HDMI video and toslink audio, my DVD which uses component video and toslink audio, and my HTPC which uses HDMI and coax audio. I'm sure I'll wind up with more configurations eventually (HDMI for an HDDVD soon). Essentially, I don't want it to have like my current setup where Video 1 has composite a/v, video 2 has composite video and toslink audio, and dvd has composite video and coax audio, I would love to be able to choose the connections for each input.
Hopefully all my novice a/v lingo makes sense to someone who knows about this stuff :) Thanks!