HD-A2 owners with Onkyo 504, 505 or 604?

I run the HD-A2 with an Onkyo 505.

It passed through HDMI Video perfectly, and HDMI Audio to my TV.

Optical then goes to the 505 as well.


So i can watch movies with either surround sound, or stereo through the TV if I'm just using it as ambient noise/distraction while working on something or falling asleep.

I don't get lossless, but it sounds great. I figure the 605 will be a purchase in the coming months. I just needed a receiver ASAP and the 605 wasn't out yet unfortunately.

You are using the optical for audio correct? The XA2 doesn't have the same issue. Might be cheaper to get an XA2 instead of a whole new receiver.

I ran into the same trouble when I tried an A20 from best buy back in march. Garbled audio using optical connection in certain places in the movies. Always at the same spots in the movie. I have an older DTS decoder from late 90's. The XA2 solved all the audio problems, saved me form buying an expensive newer Onkyo I was looking at

If your receiver does it's own decoding of the audio over HDMI, then it may very well need upgraded. HDMI is hopefully mostly final now in the 1.3a spec, but you never know.

The 604 is superb for the price you can find them at right now. I got mine a little over a month ago, and I am purely pleased. The HDMI hookups are great, and the losless sounds is amazing. Definitely worth the purchase.

What are 604s gping for used now?

I found a refurbished one on uBid w/ full manufacturers warranty. I think it was around $295 shipped.

Edit: just checked and they're back on uBid.

I use the A2 with my 604 and I think that it is a great configuration. I can ge lossless sound in multichannel pcm format, and adjust the delay at the receiver so that I have no lip sync issues with what's being displayed on my 1080i display.

I haven't encountered any popping.

I got my 604 at Circuit City on some crazy one day sale, and it cost me around $250 brand new. I had no idea there were problems with 605!!

I have no problems with my A2 + 605 + Olevia 337h LCD/Optoma HD72 projector. Great combo.

I just bought and A2 and a 505. They were both on sale and very affardable. I wanted the 605 but with money I saved I bought the A2. They work great and sound very good. The HDMI switching is also very helpful and I just use the optical in for sound.

Also, I am using this setup in my basement with a bunch of the BB Insignia speakers that I got on sale a while back. I was worried it would not sound very good, but it sounds great. It was a huge improvement over the old Kenwood 5.1 receive I had down there.

another A2/604 user here.

flawless operation. no problems.

I got the new Onyko SR605 for $399, with free shipping. I will get it on Tuesday.

A20 with 604 for a month now. No problems so far!

A2 with 504 with POLK Audio connected via optical no problems so far. My downstair neighbor does.

same for me, own a 604 and think it's great.

My 2 cents on your last question, 5spd. I've got a HD-A2, an Onkyo 674 AV receiver and Optoma's H70 (HDMI input) and Optoma's H79 (DVI input). The following scenarios occur:

HD-A2>(via HDMI)>AV receiver>(via HDMI)>H70: All works well, color space shown in H70's menu as YCrCb. Switching to RGB on the H70 turns everything green (see below).

HD-A2>(via HDMI)>AV receiver>(via HDMI-to-DVI cable)>H79: Everything is green, can't get YCrCb.

HD-A2>(via HDMI-to-DVI cable direct to H79)>H79 (bypassing receiver): All video works well, but I lose HDMI audio goodies. H79 user's menu shows color space as "RGB."

HD-A2>(via component, audio via optical)>AV receiver>(via HDMI-to-DVI cable)>H79: All video works well, but I still lose HDMI audio goodies and, possibly, video up-conversion with some commercial DVDs. This is my present HD-A2>H79 setup at present.

Finally, HD-A2>(HDMI)>AV receiver>HDMI (using a HDMI>DVI adapter)>H70. Everything works just fine.

The net of the above: you may have color problems running your Toshiba into some DVI projectors, although why the Optoma H70 works when the H79 doesn't has escaped me for the time being. Others have had no problems with some DVI input PJ's.

Just a FYI. Good luck. Be interested in reading about your experiences. Cordially,

I'll chime in to say I have the A2 -> 604 -> DVI (Hitachi RP CRT) and I have absolutely no problems with video or audio on HD and SD DVDs (when the disk will play...but that's a different issue)

Getting the TrueHD via HDMI sounds great...you might want to consider just going with the 604 and if HDMI -> DVI doesn't work in your case you can still go the optical/component route with the 604.

My only problem is I have audio CD skips via HDMI. I've switched to analog cables for CD listening and all is good.

No problems with A2 -> 604 here.

"I'd like to think the 604/605 would have no issues with hdmi-dvi"

I don't think that the Onkyo, itself, will cause problems, it's the Toshiba. My experience has been that a straight through HDMI>HDMI setup (i.e. the Optoma H70) (without HDMI/DVI adapters or cables) works just fine. However, when you introduce a HDMI>DVI adapter or cable into the equation, i.e the Optoma H79, then the potential for problems arises. My HDMI>DVI problems have been two-fold: (1) the "greening" of everything, as explained above, and (2) the apparent inability to pass blacker than black signals, which tends to make contrast/brightness settings more difficult.

Hopefully, Toshiba will eventually have a firmware fix for this, but I'm not holding my breath.

I didn't have any problems with HDMI->DVI with a Tosh A2 and my Optoma HD72.

Did you hook the Tosh up directly to your PJ or did you run it through a HDMI receiver?

I have the HD-A2, and the Onkyo 605(silver) hooked up to my HD overhead projector( PT-AE900...which I'm going to update maybe next year when the prices come down on newer models.). Ive had absolutely no problems with this set up what so ever. The sound is great, the picture is wonderful..I can't complain.

I'm satisifed with my HD-A2 and 604 combo. I'm hooked up via HDMI.

It turns out its a good thing I had the 604 when I bought the A2. My Pioneer Elite Pro730 only has DVI (HDCP though). If the A2 was plugged directly into the Pioneer the resolution would drop to 480. Running it through the 604 gave me the full sweatness of 1080i. I believe this problem has been resolved in one of the latest firmware updates, but I haven't had to try it.

I have the HD-A2 and I was thinking about buying the Onkyo 605.

According to DTSONLINE.com, in order to use DTS-MA, both the player and the reciever need to have HDMI v1.3.

If the HD-A2 has HDMI v1.2 and the onkyo 605 has v1.3, will I still be able to get full use of TrueHD/DTS-MA??