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Receiver with Onscreen Volume Display?

443 Views 9 Replies 6 Participants Last post by ekb, Oct 7, 2006

BBobley

Discussion Starter · Oct 5, 2006

Hi,

May I ask for some advice? The speakers built into my Philips plasma display are quite bad -- they frequently buzz when playing low frequency sound. So I want to get some kind of external speakers. I'm not necessarily looking for a full surround setup. Maybe just two front speakers and perhaps a center channel.

The Philips has a digital audio out, so it is easy to connect that to the digital input of an AV receiver. It seems to me that one advantage of this approach is that I won't have to worry about using the AV receiver to switch inputs. Anything I play on the TV (DVD and HD-DirecTivo) will work. Plus, that means my family can continue to use the Tivo remote for everything (I can program it to raise/lower the volume on most AV Receivers). But this means that I will lose my onscreen volume display (which will drive my family crazy, I'm sure!).

Is there a workaround? I guess one possibility is to use an AV receiver as the switchbox for the video and audio signals rather than taking the audio "out" of the display. Do most/all AV receivers output an onscreen display for volume control? For example, the Panasonic XR55S seems like a reasonable low-cost solution, but I'm not sure if it has on-screen volume display. Any suggestions on a receiver that provides that functionality?

thanks.

p.s. I currently use HDMI cables but I could switch to component if necessary.

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BBobley

Discussion Starter · #2 · Oct 6, 2006

Do any receivers < $300 have onscreen volume that will display on my video display?

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davdev

· #3 · Oct 6, 2006

None that I have seen

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largdiag

· #4 · Oct 6, 2006

Most will list OSD as a feature.

But this is dedicated OSD, in other words you have to swtich the TV input to the receiver to view the OSD. It is not overlayed over the picture which is im sure what you want.

Only a few of the high end >$1000 units offer overlay and thats going to be via the HDMI to the TV assuming you using HD TV.

The Sony 5200 released this week, has a very sophisticated OSD GUI overlay on top of 1080I. YOu can view their demo online. I predict youll see this type of GUI interface on all new recievers in the next 2 years.

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JayMan007

· #5 · Oct 6, 2006

Most AVR use 480i as their OSD... I was looking for this as well but never found a AVR that would work. What I use now is a universal remote (Harmony) that I send a volume up/down to the AVR & the TV. Since I don't have the speakers connected to the TV, or even audio going into it, I only see a volume bar on the TV. Sometimes they get out of sync, but thats easy enough to adjust. When I sync, I match 20 on the TV to -20 on the AVR.

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BBobley

Discussion Starter · #6 · Oct 7, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by JayMan007
Most AVR use 480i as their OSD... I was looking for this as well but never found a AVR that would work. What I use now is a universal remote (Harmony) that I send a volume up/down to the AVR & the TV. Since I don't have the speakers connected to the TV, or even audio going into it, I only see a volume bar on the TV. Sometimes they get out of sync, but thats easy enough to adjust. When I sync, I match 20 on the TV to -20 on the AVR.

Thank you all for your help. This is very informative. I will be using 1080i. So it sounds like I will be forced to lose OSD of the volume level if I move to an AV receiver and external speakers. (Though I could use the interesting workaround proposed by JayMan007).

That's a shame -- my wife will be bummed. Perhaps I can find an AV receiver whose own built-in display is large enough to be read from a distance. Then, at least, you could see a visual confirmation of the volume going up and down.

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BBobley

Discussion Starter · #7 · Oct 7, 2006

A follow-up: Considering what I've just learned -- that I won't be able to get an onscreen volume overlayed on the screen -- how should I hook up my new AV Receiver?

In other words, since my display has all the inputs I need (two HDMI), is there any reason to use the AV receiver as my input/source switcher? In other words, I'm tempted to simply take the digital audio OUT on my display and connect to the digital audio IN on the AV receiver to play both HDTV and DVD.

Is there any pro/con about doing this vs. plugging the HD receiver and DVD player into the AV receiver first and then going to the display?

Brett

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ekb

· #8 · Oct 7, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBobley
In other words, I'm tempted to simply take the digital audio OUT on my display and connect to the digital audio IN on the AV receiver to play both HDTV and DVD.

Is there any pro/con about doing this vs. plugging the HD receiver and DVD player into the AV receiver first and then going to the display?

I haven't been following this thread too closely, so I hope I'm not too far off - but given the above - it sounds like you want to pipe the digital audio from a DTV receiver thru the TV to the AV receiver. I don't think that this usually works. Usually the the digital audio output on a TV only works for the TV's internal tuner - not for any device feeding digital audio to the TV.

Ed

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Johnla

· #9 · Oct 7, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by BBobley
That's a shame -- my wife will be bummed. Perhaps I can find an AV receiver whose own built-in display is large enough to be read from a distance. Then, at least, you could see a visual confirmation of the volume going up and down.

Many receivers also have a small LED on the volume knob, and with most the volume knob also moves with the remote commands. So I'd guess if worse comes to worse, she could look at that if the receivers display is too small to read, in order to see if the knob is moving CCW or CW. But I really can't see what the big issue is with this, because anyone should also be able to hear if the volume is going up or down or not. So why do so many people also need to see a visual bar graph or a set of numbers marked with dbs, that really only confirms that what they are hearing is going either up or down?

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ekb

· #10 · Oct 7, 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by Johnla
Many receivers also have a small LED on the volume knob, and with most the volume knob also moves with the remote commands. So I'd guess if worse comes to worse, she could look at that if the receivers display is too small to read, in order to see if the knob is moving CCW or CW. But I really can't see what the big issue is with this, because anyone should also be able to hear if the volume is going up or down or not. So why do so many people also need to see a visual bar graph or a set of numbers marked with dbs, that really only confirms that what they are hearing is going either up or down?

I wouldn't say many receivers have that light - in fact I think it's quite rare nowadays.

Regarding the need for a display - I think that the human ear/brain are good a detecting relative volume, but worse at judging absolute volume. Sometimes it's nice to get calibrated to see how loud something is - like if the rest of the family is sleeping and you think you have it low but it's not.

And then there's the guy that once posted that he couldn't live with the volume at x.5 dB. It needed to be at a whole number!

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