Onkyo TX-SR806 7.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver (Black) Best Quality

This receiver produces great sound, I have watched all my favorite movies again and this receiver produces sounds I didn't even know existed. It must be said that my old receiver was a very average Sony, so some sound quality improvement was to be expected, but it did exceed my expectations. My HD Tivo and my old DVD player were hooked up with ease (HDMI) and when I ran the signal (HDMI) from the receiver to my Panasonic TH 50PZ850U TV the picture was awesome.

Everything would have been fine if I didn't purchase my Panasonic DMP-BD55K Blu-ray player (fantastic btw). This is when I discovered that the receiver likes to mess with some 1080P signals, even if you tell it not too (really annoying that pass through doesn't really work). As a previous review has stated there are a lot of people that are experiencing 'blue dot' issues when PS3 and XBox's are hooked up to this receiver. Basically the receiver will introduce artifacts (blue dots on screen in presumably random locations) on some 1080P signals, I don't pretend to understand why but a quick Google search will lead you to a number of forums that discuss possible causes and fixes. The only fix that I have found to work is to tell my Blu Ray player to only send out 1080i signals to the receiver if I see blue dots, which seems to happen on almost every DVD (not Blu ray)I own. Blu Ray disks seem to be unaffected, at least for me. But if I put a DVD in, the player will automatically up convert it to 1080P (which is a good thing) but the receiver is not able to cope without introducing these blue dots (bad thing). If I bypass the receiver and send HDMI straight from the Blu Ray player (still 1080P) to the TV the picture is great, but that is a work around for an issue this receiver should not have.

So if you are planning on only playing Blu Ray's or watching 1080i signals then you might be very happy with this receiver. If however you want an artifact free picture and you own an xbox, ps3 or expect to use your Blu Ray player to up convert DVD's to 1080P then you are probably going to want to look at alternatives like the Onkyo 876 or the Denon AVR-2809CI. Get more detail about Onkyo TX-SR806 7.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver (Black).