Looking for a Receiver to Accommodate Old and New Gear

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Q I’m planning to replace my 20-year-old receiver and would like to hook up older components including a laserdisc player, cassette deck, VCR, and turntable. I like Yamaha and Denon receivers, but I’m confused about the connection options. My newer gear consists of a Samsung HDTV, Oppo Blu-ray player, Roku 3 media streamer, and Verizon Fios HD set-top box. —Dan White / via e-mail

A Analog AV inputs can still be found on new receivers, but their number has dropped substantially over the past few years. There are plenty of HDMI inputs for digital sources like Blu-ray players and Roku boxes, but analog connections can number as low as two on budget (under-$500) models.

If you spend more ($500 and up), you’ll find models with a phono input for connecting your turntable, along with multiple composite and component video inputs for connecting older components like your laserdisc player. They should also provide analog-to-HDMI video conversion so you can output composite and component video signals digitally over HDMI (in some cases scaled up to 4K resolution). As for S-video inputs, those started to disappear from receivers around the same time analog AV connections became rarified.

My recommendation is to buy at least a mid-level receiver with sufficient analog AV inputs to accommodate your handful of legacy sources. Both Yamaha and Denon offer a few such models in the $500-to-$600 price range.

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