When do the 2013 Denon's come out? Any new features we should expect? - Page 45

Thanks...long time lurker. =)


My thoughts exactly...rep at local shop is convinced that there will be HDCP or EDID issues... On that topic though, I wonder how the zone1/zone2 hdmi matrix will handle various setups. I assume main zone could be 5.1 (or 7.1), and zone 2 could be just 2ch (using TV's speakers). Do you agree that should work? What about if one TV is 1080p and the other is 780p? Clearly there would be issues on both video and audio if both zones picked the same source...but what if each has a different one?



Aw...I get it now. For some reason I had actually expected there to be multiple AirPlay destinations...1 per zone. So on your iDevice, you would choose to send to zone 1 or zone 2...but instead it's just AirPlay as a source...so the iDevice just sends to the AVR and the zone has to pick that source. Oh well...still easily resolved with a double-connected ATV2 to create two AirPlay sources within the AVR.

That's why I say "in theory" as HDMI issues are so common (HDCP/EDID or otherwise). You may also have to add an HDMI extender just prior to AVR#2 and most definitely just prior to AVR#3. The Zone 2 HDMI jack will be a "switch" only, so if you have a DD DTS-MA 5.1 audio source playing in the main zone, the same signal would pass to Zone 2 (so if your TV cannot except an HD audio signal then no go, rather you must pass what the AVR/TV is capable of receiving). As switches go, the video is limited to the lowest common denominator resolution of the displays connected (as is the case with the main zone Monitor Out jacks); however, I don't believe this will apply to the Zone 2 HDMI jack (ie. consider it as another switch independent from the main zone dual HDMI switch).

Vyrolan -- so in effect you want to "daisy chain" the HDMI passthrough using two 3313's to get one set of sources to three "zones"? As JD says "in theory" it should work but I would tend to agree with the rep that the likelihood of this working in practice with all the HDCP handshake potential is pretty slim. You will PROBABLY be OK though as long as you don't try to "share" the same source across two or more different "zones" at the same time.

the bottom line though is we won't REALLY know until these things hit the streets. This is literally the first receiver to ever offer this matrix feature so it's going to be a trial by fire...

Agreed. I would personally probably never share sources, so it may be worth a shot. As long as they are different sources, I would hope that the zone 2 hdmi is essentially completely independent of what level of audo/video is playing in the main zone. This would seem to be their target audience for the feature...a simple TV with its own TV speakers in a second room...so I assume they must have dealt with issues regarding those two TVs having different audo/video capabilities (as long as they are receiving different sources). I think if we try to extend it further and expect more fully-featured secondary zones, we may run into trouble. It would seem reasonable though that it should be able to just forward the streams on... As a purely hypothetical example, if I hook up two BluRay players as inputs, I should be able to play 1 of them in the main zone with full 7.1 audo...and have the second one play to Zone 2 HDMI which is connected to another receiver in another room and play full 7.1 audio there as well. But maybe that's asking too much.

My other thought was not to daisy chain...simply make the Office be Zone 2 for both. Both 3313s would have the room they are in as main zone, and both of them would have their zone 2 hdmi run to the office TV...that way the office could have access to both room's sources.

I'm definitely intrigued by the feature...and I'll be getting two of the 3313s absolutely as soon as possible (unless I give in to my inner SQ-freak and want to wait on the new 43xx). So hopefully I'll be able to try any and all scenarios. =p

Nope ... AFAIK, this is exactly how it should work.


Keep in mind the 4520CI at more than 2x the cost of the 3313CI won't be available until Sep/Oct.

Agreed! Just that reality may not play out that way... It would be fantastic for my situation if it did.



The Sep/Oct part is a far bigger concern to me than the price. I'm impatient. =) I've already stretched this project out too long...and then it was so close to the announcement of the xx13 specs so I waited for that too...now this zone 2 hdmi has made me rethink how to accomplish some different parts of it. =p

^^
If price is of no concern, you're likely to get the 3313CI much quicker directly from Denon's website as soon as the "Add to Cart" bar shows up.

http://usa.denon.com/US/Product/Page...eivers(DenonNA)

B&H Photo (authorized reseller) shows a delivery date of June 19.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...d_Network.html

If you are going to have 2 BDPs to one receiver and then send the audio to a second receiver in Zone 2, I have to ask, why wouldn't you have the 2nd BDP in the Zone 2 room along with the receiver that is already there???

I give that poor rep at my local shop enough grief with all my crazy ideas...it'd be just mean to then also go buy the stuff elsewhere. =)


That's why I said "as a purely hypothetical example". Obviously you would never put two BluRays in the same room as two sources just so you could send one to another AVR through such a setup. I just didn't want to make up a realistic example (such as a BluRay playing in the main zone with full audio and also a PS3 playing a game to the second zone also with full surround) since I was focusing specifically on the HDMI connections, the presence and playback of >2ch audio, and the concerns with EDID/HDCP.

PM sent

PM received. Thanks David.

However they won't ship the Denon to Canada. They will ship other products just not Denon.

Cheers.

WOW Steve you must have a stock pile of pictures of this nature awaiting your every call Love the Delorian with the monster wheels over the other thread..

Lol

Dan

I was wondering whether or not you could use a cheaper Denon 16xx or 17xx as a Zone 2 "HDMI Decoder" to get analog sources to Zone 2.

Zone 2 HDMI out would be hooked up to the 2nd AVR with the L & R of that
receiver into the Zone 2 amplifier.

So for the price of a second AVR would you be able to get all analog &
HDMI sources to Zone 2 ?

All my sources are centralized in one area and I use UHF remotes to
control the equipment.

As an aside, you don't need this feature to get analog sources to Zone 2. It can send analog video sources to Zone 2 as well as powered audio with amp assign to Zone 2. You don't even need the 3313 for this...the 3312 can do it as well as long as you only want analog sources to go to Zone 2.



My understanding would be yes that is possible, and I think some of the others agree based on their comments from the earlier discussion. The HDMI Zone 2 out would contain both the audio and video...no other hookups should be necessary. You should in theory be able to take the HDMI Zone 2 out of one AVR and use it as an input to another receiver, and so that receiver would then have access to all of the AVR's sources (both analog and HDMI) and at full quality.

That's the exact scenario I'd like to try out...in my situation, I'd personally like to extend it further by making both of them 3313 so I could use the 2nd AVR's HDMI Zone 2 out to further extend the reach of the original sources into a 3rd room.

It would look like this:
Room #1 has access to A Sources and has audio powered by the 1st AVR.
Room #2 has access to A and B Sources and has audio powered by 2nd AVR.
Room #3 has access to A and B Sources and uses the TV's speakers.

Not sure it will apply in your intended configuration; however, the 3312CI in addition to passing "analog" sources can also pass PCM 2.0 over optical/digital coax to Zone 2, whereas this feature has been removed from the 3313CI with the introduction of the HDMI Zone 2 jack.

it's been a bit slow around the office lately, which allows me to peruse AVS and plan for the next upgrade .

Thanks for the reply (and you too, Batpig). That's really disappointing. If it hasn't happened by now (and according to you, features are actually being removed), I'm going to guess that digital sources to an amplified zone 2 will never be a reality. I'm surprised there isn't at a viable market for this.

Twisting my original question a bit: are you aware of any receivers that can decode HDMI audio and send it to zone 2 if zone 1 is not powered on?

^^^

nope... none....

there really isn't a viable market, when you consider what the cost would be to include what you are asking for... you'd be asking the great majority of consumers to pay an increased price for a product that has a feature that very few of them will actually use...

the thing to understand is that (1) it would be expensive to add a whole second HDMI decoder + processing just to get a stereo downmix independently for Zone 2 and (2) the VAST majority of Zone 2 applications will be distributed stereo audio, for which analog RCA (or stereo PCM for a few selected digital sources like network audio) is perfectly suitable and cheap & easy to implement.

you wouldn't gain any SQ advantage by using fancy HDMI cables to distribute your Pandora stream to the backyard or the bedroom vs. analog RCA's... the only advantage gained would be a little bit of convenience for the end-user. At a major added expense. All so you don't have to just hook up a couple extra analog RCA cables?

Well, that's just it: with everything having HDMI today, the chips are quite inexpensive. The larger cost, I suspect, would be in the engineering of a branching signal path. No additional D/A converters are required; just a different allocation of them.

But let's ignore HDMI to zone 2 while HDMI is playing in zone 1. Let's simplify it further. Denon already had "party mode", which would blast audio to all 7 channels. How hard could it possibly be to mute the first 5 channels in software, leaving only zone 2?

(I know, "How hard could it be," famous last words!)

Regardless, I'm happy to see the zone 2 HDMI. That's a good, positive step, even if it wasn't the one I (and some others here, it seems) were hoping for!

(batpig: my original issue was/is that my HTPC will not output digital and analog audio at the same time, meaning I can't pump it to zone 2.)

there are some receivers that do HDMI audio "party mode" to zone 2/3. You are correct that it's definitely easier to implement if you remove the independence of zone 2.

it wouldn't surprise me to see more receivers implement this "solution", i.e., you can play HDMI audio to other zones as long as it's also playing in main zone. Because as you point out it's relatively easy, whereas the hard part is the independent digital signal path (unlike an independent stereo analog path which is dirt simple).

Well technically, isn't this where hdmi matrixing is supposed to come into play?

^^^

nope, not really... the "matrix switch" sits in front of the processing*...

* going on the assumption that we "know" what they are going to do, as that really is the most likely scenario...

I hear you on that, stretchsje! For me, the solution would be Windows 8 to do simultaneous audio output. The best would be analog and digital but I could live with two digital signals then put in a DAC for zone 2. That would end the hassle of having to switch default output devices in Control Panel every time I want to switch between zone 1 and zone 2.

Jim

You might want to try using the Monoprice 4x1 HDMI switch which also outputs stereo audio over a 3.5mm output which you can then connect to the AVR via a 3.5mm--> RCA converter cable. Additionally, it provides for 3 more HDMI inputs as well!

http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

^^ That's what I'm planning on doing (Monoprice DAC splitter) as I've been unable to find any other workable solution for the same problem. Pity, as Windows XP allowed you to output analog and digital outputs simultaneously, but Microsoft claimed to have "fixed that bug" with Windows 7 -- only enabling one or the other.

I see Crutchfield now has the 13s in stock. Anyone get one yet? Still trying to determine which model best fits my needs. I'm struggling with the decision around whether or not to pony up money for these newer AirPlay models when I can just buy an AppleTv for $99. But my need for many more HDMI inputs may make the decision a moot point and push me to the 13s.

NEVERMIND - found the other thread - http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...php?p=22049362. And I'm off!

First time poster,long time lurker. How much consideration should I give to the fact that the new receivers (specifically AVR-3313CI) are made in China and the AVR-4311CI which is made in Japan? Forgetting of course the difference in features etc.

^^^

imo... i wouldn't worry...

interestingly enough, for those of us of a certain age, "made in japan" wasn't exactly a badge of honor...

edit: that's not a political statement, fwiw... it's a statement of "not all that long ago, anything made in japan was considered junk"....

frankly, as long as the cem is doing their quality control, it doesn't matter if they make it on the moon... if they aren't doing their quality control (onkyo, you know who you are), you could make it in the finest factory staffed only by tibetan monks and it would be junk...

Monoprice has a newer revision of that same product (new pid 7974). The newer one is getting better reviews and a few even specifically comment that it is superior in reliability than pid 5577.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2

In the specific use case of HDMI sources to powered Zone 2, it'd almost be nice just to have it as a convertor...even if you don't use any of the other 3 inputs. =p

They also have a 4x2 matrix where the first output has simultaneous parallel analog output via RCA...again a decent solution for getting HDMI sources to powered Zone 2.
http://www.monoprice.com/products/pr...seq=1&format=2