Sony have announced a new line of home theatre receivers creaming the competition with a top model 7.1 receiver showing some rather unusual features.
The STR-6400ES is not just network enabled. It streams music from your network like most modern systems. IT relays internet radio through a SHOUTcast service along with a number of the discrete inputs on the system, such as CD, turntable and radio. It even sends video to a second zone with its own set of OSD menus for controlling the signal.
With a backplane measured in square meters and some rather impressive specs, this is not at all an uninteresting piece of equipment for those about to bedazzle their TV apparatus (apparatii?).
CD drive
Wifi
Flac audio
Digital IO
Ogg-Vorbis
uPnP support
Video
The 2nd zone audio (analog out only) from a component video source is a major problem. You can’t link audio and video together like you can on the Main Zone including tryin to use the same device’s analog audio source. 2nd Zone works fine with composite video and analog audio sources but video is just upconverted to 1080i as a stretched picture, so it is not really HD.