Do I need a new receiver? Or "just" cables?

Hello and welcome.

If all you have is component and video running to your projector you are "short changing" your set up. According to a couple of sources I checked the Panny only has HDMI (HD hook up) and video (SD hook up). Your current receiver does not have HDMI.

To take advantage of the HD using your current equipment (PJ and BR player) you will need to get a receiver with HDMI and run an HDMI cable to the PJ. If you don't you will only be getting a SD signal from the BR player.

To answer yes the receiver you list will work just fine. Just be sure you get your cables from monoprice.com and don't pay 80 bucks for a six foot cable.

I have the 8350 and it is a great PJ and is a great bang for the buck PJ and once it gets a HD signal you will be very happy with the image.

Hope this helps and good luck.

Regards,

RTROSE

You made a fine choice for a projector - and that's not the problem... You've hit the copy protection paranoia of the studios who have forced the removal of analog HD video output from all Blu-ray players. No new Blu-ray players will have component video, and no AV receiver (AVR) will convert HDMI to component (never have).

So you have a couple of choices:

1) Run HDMI to your projector, just for the Blu-ray player, and run optical digital audio from the BD player to your existing receiver.

2) Buy a 2-year-old Blu-ray player with component video outputs to connect to your existing receiver and cabling

3) Upgrade the receiver AND run HDMI to the projector. You'd then run HDMI from the BD player to the receiver.

#3, while the most expensive of the options, also gets you the most 'upgrades', as a modern AVR will also include support for the lossless audio codecs (DTS-MA) used on Blu-ray, and will also get you access to a lot of Internet music services and so forth. And you'd only need the HDMI cable to the projector (nothing else), as the AVR will upconvert everything else to HDMI, making the setup simpler to operate, as all switching would occur in the AVR.

Hope that helps,

Jeff

You'll want to move up to the NR515 to get the "HDMI upconversion" to keep the cabling / switching simple. That model also adds the Audyssey room correction feature, which is nice to have.

^^^^^Yup totally agree with you Jeff. Having the upconversion would be great for simplicity sake and the room correction as well.

As you probably have figured out olditgirl that the higher you go cost wise the more performance and features you will get. Sometimes there is a definite law of diminishing returns. What that means for me, is there is a true sweet spot in receivers of about 500 to 700 bucks. Most of the receivers in this price range will have many different feature sets, some you may use some you may not. One of the features you might poo poo is networking with your home network. I bought a receiver that has networking and did not think I would use it all that much, but turns out that I use it quite frequently. Also if you or your kids have iPods, iPads etc, it is nice to have the ability to use those to stream music and control the receiver.

Lots to think of, I know. Hopefully I have not confused you further, but since you mentioned a "sweet spot" I thought I'd throw some other ideas out there for you to consider.

Regards,

RTROSE

Everything will work fine. The only issue where this comes up is when folks buy a "Home Theater in a Box (HTiB)" system that has non-standard speakers which can be problematic. You don't mention what speakers you have, but your receiver and the new ones we've suggested will work with most any speakers. And since your existing receiver's output power is in the same range as the new one, no problems there, either.

Jeff

The TX-NR515 as it will convert the analog signal from your VCR to a digital signal which will be sent to the Epson via the HDMI cable you will be putting in.

You should be good to go.

Regards,

RTROSE