Harman Kardon unveils AVR 7550HD receiver |
If you have been shopping for some new gear for your home theater this is the week to be in the market. The CEDIA Expo is going on this week which means just about everyone capable of making home theater gear is pulling out their new wares.
Harmon Kardon has announced a new AV receiver that uses the latest components for good sound. The device is called the AVR 7550HD and features a TI Aureus DA710 audio digital-signal processor. The receiver has HDMI 1.3a with deep color capability and support pass through of 1080p signals.


Onkyo has unveiled a new home AV receiver that means business. It’s the company’s first that includes Pandora, Rhapsody, and Sirius streaming internet radio support. The Onyko TX-NR807 supports DLNA 1.5 media streaming, for playback of media stored on networked computers and drives, along with six HDMI ports, Faroudja DCDi Cinema 1080p upscaling and both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio.
One of my all-time favorite mobile mice for notebooks is the Logitech VX Nano. The reason I liked the mouse so much was that it had a tiny Nano receiver that was so small you didn’t even need to unplug it to pack up your notebook.
Marantz has introduced an entry-level AV receiver in the NR1501. List priced at $600, the AV receiver comes with four HDMI inputs, onboard decoding for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, and analog video upconversion.
The TwoNav Aventura GPS receiver is interesting as it can accept virtually any kind of map without running into compatibility issues. It would be a good tool for those who want to scan and calibrate any type of map prior to uploading. The Aventura comes with a 3.5″ touchscreen display that will serve you for both handheld and automobile use.
There are lots of iPod accessories on the market today and the bulk of them may work with the iPod, but they are not iPhone compatible. That means when you plug them in you get that message on your iPhone screen saying you can’t make calls.
Some new Pioneer receivers were caught talking at CES 2009 about how they want to hook-up with iPods and how they require Apple’s standard USB data cable to do so. The VSX series receivers won’t kill you in the wallet too badly, and they have features that I’m sure you will want, including out-of-the-box compatibility with iPods.








