Receivers

DVD, say your prayers. Blu-ray Disc, better get your affairs in order. Judging from the new A/V receivers Pioneer introduced on Monday at the W Hotel in San Francisco, one could easily conclude that the old "hard" media formats have pretty much played out.

There's a trend afoot in A/V-land to make even Flagship receivers simpler (at least on the outside), easier to use, and physically more compact and less intimidating. Now Yamaha has boarded this bus, not just with a single model but with an entire new family of AVRs it's calling Aventage (rhymes with fromage).

A generation ago, Sony ruled the consumer electronics world, establishing new market segments with every innovation and instantly owning whatever existing ones it chose to enter. Today, although it’s still a consumer electronics force to be reckoned with, Sony has to step into the cage and compete like everybody else.

The Sherwood Newcastle R-972 A/V receiver is the most eagerly anticipated product of its kind to arrive in these parts in some time. Not because it’s the brand’s first new flagship receiver in 4 or 5 years. Not because it’s an all-new 7 x 100- watt, HDMI v1.3, Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio-decoding design. And not because it boasts top-shelf Reon video processing.