Hi, I am looking into buying a new receiver as my 20 yr old Denon finally bit it. Have been reading a lot about HDMI, 5.1,6.1... so I am thinking about getting a 5.1 or 7.1 type recevier and am curious what it will do for me now in terms of video quality. I currently have an old Mitsubishi 52" projection type TV with Dish Network Satilite. As the Dish Network receiver only has Svideo out, will a AVR with Svideo to Component up-conversion improve picture quality? Will it be noticible with the projection type TV?

Thinking about receivers such as Onkyo 605, Marantz 4001...

Thanks, and I apologize in advance for current and future newbie questions:)

First, if it's just signal upconversion with no video scaling to a higher resolution, there are no benefits besides convenience.

If it's upscaling to higher resolution, then it could be beneficial, but only if you have an HDTV. It is not clear from your post if that is the case, you seem to insinuate that your TV is also fairly old, thus likely only 480i. In which case, no there would be no benefits unless you got an HDTV. And if you did so, there may be moot benefits since most all HDTVs will upscale the resolution to some degree, and ALL digital displays will scale to their native resolution whatever that may be. In that case, it would depend on the relative quality between the scaling in the display, and the scaling provided by outboard devices such as a receiver. But again, be clear between upscaling the resolution, and simply upconverting from one signal type to another with no video processing at all. The latter has been prevalent for some time, the former is much less so, though becoming much more common.

Its just upconverting. Its a ~10 yr old projection tv. Just thinking longterm - if I should invest on a 7.1 receiver with lots of options rather than a standard stereo type receiver replacing the old Denon. Im cetain that a HDTV is in my future - probably a year or two out though....