With there being so many different types of home theater receivers that can be purchased it can be very difficult to make sense of them all. In order to understand what type of receiver is going to work best for a certain home theater setup it’s going to be necessary to have an understanding of the different features the receivers have and which ones are necessary for you. Since there are tons of different ways that a home theater can be set up, understanding what your particular options are can help you to choose the best audio and video receiver available.

Different Features of Receivers

There are many different levels of receivers that people can purchase. Some of them can be very inexpensive while others are very high-end and will be very expensive to purchase.

It’s not always necessary to spend a lot of money to buy a good quality product that will work well with your speaker system. The key here is going to be figuring out what type of speakers you have and finding a receiver that will work well with those.

The first thing you want to decide is how many speakers you have or plan to have. This will help to determine how many channels the receiver needs to be able to output to in order to provide a unique line to each speaker. A very common set up is the surround sound with 5.1-channels. This is considered the most common type these days and offers a very basic, yet nice, surround sound decoding. You can go all the way down to 2.1-channels and you can go all the way up to 7.1-channels. Not all receivers will be able to handle a 7.1 set up so if you plan to have seven speakers and a subwoofer then you will need to make sure that you find a home theater receiver that is capable of providing that support.

The next thing you need to consider is what type of format you would like to be able to listen to your sound in. Sound can be output in many different formats and they all have varying levels of quality. The level of quality you would like to listen to is going to depend a lot on what type of speakers you have and what type of movies you watch. If you are a fan of Blu-Ray then you will need to have a receiver that is capable of decoding TrueHd and DTS-HD. If you do not have one that can handle this then you will not be able to hear the high definition audio that these high-definition Blu-Ray discs can put out.

What Features Do You Need

Now that you have an idea of some of the different things you need to look at when comparing various home theater receivers, you are going to need to decide what options your setup requires. If you have a Blu-Ray player and want to be able to take advantage of the high-definition audio then you need to make sure the receiver you pick out is capable of decoding that format. If you mostly watch older DVD movies and you just need a basic setup then you will want to make sure the receiver is capable of decoding the Dolby Digital format.

It is not a bad idea to plan for the future when picking out a home audio and video receiver. If you plan to buy new speakers within the next six months to a year, it may be a good idea for you to buy a receiver that will be compatible with more advanced speakers. You’ll want to think about the same thing if you plan to upgrade to a Blu-Ray player from a regular DVD player for both higher quality video and audio.

You can expect to spend anywhere from $200-$600 for an entry-level receiver. The mid-range prices run anywhere from $600-$2500. Lastly the high-end models can cost anywhere from $2500 all the way up to over $10,000. So there is a wide range of products available to help meet various budgets.

Choosing the correct receiver for your needs is a very important step of the process. Without choosing the right product you will not be able to take advantage of the different types of sound that you can listen to movies in. Being an educated buyer can help you to make a quality purchase without overspending for things that you do not need.