Digital Trends

Time was, a receiver was simply that, a hub which received the signals from a variety of audio sources, amplified them and enabled them to share a single set of speakers. The advent of home theater brought with it a need for video inputs as well, particularly as source components evolved from VCR to laserdisc to DVD to Blu-ray. New and competing audio formats have cropped up as well, to the point where the A/V receiver is now more akin to a Swiss Army knife, a complex gadget called upon to tackle a myriad of entertainment challenges.

This is most assuredly the era of high-definition, and now many people are buying into Blu-ray only to find that their old receivers aren't quite up to the task. Onkyo had met the demand for an affordable, versatile home theater receiver with last year's TX-SR605, a truly impressive offering for the modern age, with HDMI switching and the latest audio codecs. And after listening to consumer and industry feedback, they have addressed the 605's few limitations to make its successor even better, resulting in the killer TX-SR606.