Well, in another kind of bang, it looks like my receiver is toast. When the storms came through on the weekend I didn't unplug my equipment and it looks like something in the output section is gone. my input indicates when it gets a signal from the HTPC, but there is no sound. Nothing on the tuner either. I haven't tried analog in yet.

Looks like I need to go shopping.

I am looking for one too what is the best AV right now for $2000 and under. Denon avr4310CI $1999 perhaps I really dont know too much about these

Hi Fred:

Sorry to hear that..did you check if HTPC is on Mute?
My HTPC does that to me sometimes.

--Avi

Hi Avi. I did a cursory check, but haven't dug deep into the bowels of the OS. The receiver changes from a flashing to a solid lignt on the input indicator when it gets a signal. I assume that mute cuts the signal entirely. I guess I should test that out.

I will take the receiver in to a store later this week to get independant verification that its pooched.

Best really seems to depend on what you are looking for. Denon is well loved here because all their models seem to have such a robust power supply. There are some here using higher end Onkyo receivers with good results as well.

I'm relatively new to HT and only have experience with my Sherwood.

If you want the best of the best, get a pre-pro and the Axiom class-D amp.

I'm sorry to hear about your loss, that sucks! I do have to hand it to Denon, they make a solid piece of equipment! My 4802 has made it through two electrical storms, one that knocked a 36 inch TV out cold, and a second that sent a computer to the electronics grave yard. On top of that it survived a fire that totally destroyed every other piece of electronics I had in my basement... simply amazing! So I absolutely give Denon my recommendations. I only wish they made televisions and cheaper amps. As much as I love them, I can't justify $7500 for an outboard amp!!!

On a related note yesterday our Maxtor One Touch file system crashed taking our last years worth of photography work along with it. Now we get to send it off for data recovery which is not only tricky, its EXPENSIVE!!! Technology can be a real buzzkill sometimes! =(

As cheap as hard drive space is these days everyone should have a backup drive or two for safety...

You should do offsite backup for photos, videos, and documents. It isn't that expensive considering the pain it can save you.

Telling someone what they should have done after data loss is kinda rough. We all know what we should be doing, and it is all the more obvious at these times.

Well here's the real topper 2 this story, the Maxtor One Touch III Turbo WAS our back up system. Two weeks ago the power supply on our 650 gig FreeAgent went out and we're waiting on the replacement to arrive. In the meantime we have our Maxtor set up on Raid1 where one disc (it's a two Terabite unit housing two one terabite discs. You can set it up as Raid2 that uses both discs as one big disk, or Raid1 where one disk is an exact mirror of the 1st disk) is a back-up of the other disk. So just two weeks ago we had everything backed up three times. Then like I said the power supply went out on the FreeAgent and so we've just been using the Maxtor as a stand alone unit until the replacement arrives. Of course we knew we were taking our chances this way, but what were the odds lighting would strike twice so close together right... well now we get to be the example they always use when they say, "you never want to risk it". We risked it, and we lost.

But here's the thing, we still did have everything backed up twice. So the odd part is, if one disk went bad, why can't I access the back-up??? What's the use of having a back-up if its going to crash the same time the main disk crashes? And who on earth has all three sources crash within two weeks of eachother???

There are only so many safety steps you can take after all. I felt fairly secure with having three copies of everything. So what am I supposed to do now? What if I get an off-site back up and right after my hard-drive crashes they have a fire & they lose all of my stuff as well? Then everyone can say, "well you should have kept back-up disks in a fire proof safe"... But what if a meteor the size of a Buick crashes through my roof and lands on my fire proof safe turning it into rubble... where does it all end???

BTW I don't mean to sound crappy or ungreatful for anyone's advice, I do appreciate it, thanks. I'm just feeling sorry for myself and my dumbass decision to risk it until our replacement FreeAgent comes. I figured the risk was small, but its going to end up costing us dearly!!!

It is really odd that two different makes of drives failed at the same time. When I build large arrays I always use at least two different manufacturer's disks together. I found out the hard way that within a single manufacturing batch all the drives have about the same life expectancy. I had a five disk RAID5 with a hot spare. When one of the drives failed it started the rebuild onto the spare. While thrashing about to recreate the missing parity data a second drive failed, lost everything at that point. That's not supposed to happen either.

Yeah its funny, the further along we come technologically, the worse off we seem to get. Everything seems so damn fragile anymore.

Fred, although you didn't unplug during the storm, I assume that you tried that move for a while now to see if it would reset?

::runs to livingroom to unplug avr::

Um...

Thanks for the suggestion John. I will plug it in again when I get up.

In the mean time I did some reading on receivers. The three I looked at were the Denon 2309Ci (on clerance locally for $799), the Denon 790 basic, beefy and reasonably inexpensive at $650 and the Onkyo 707 on pre-order special at $799.

The 2309 does not seem like that great a deal. It dosn't seem to offer much more than the 790 that I care about. The sales guy made a big deal about it being manufactured in Japan and the extra power, but it only offers up 15wpc more than the 790.

For the same price (pre-order) the Onkyo707 offers pre-outs should I ever feel under powered as well as zone 2 pre-outs.

The 790 weighs in at $650 on sale and will certainly be enough power for now. It also offers improved upscaling from the 2309 and 707.

For my fellow Canadians, how do these prices look to you? I didn't have much time to look around. I guess I'll sleep on it for now.

Hi Fred,

Best Buy has the Denon 790 on sale for $599.99.

Hi Fred, you might want to check out Audio Video Unlimited , they carry Denon and Pioneer AVR's. I've dealt with them before and they gave me excellent deals on my 2809 + BD1800 as well as my Paradigm sub. Nobody came close on their pricing for either of these...their prices are not "final", you can dicker with them. Also, if you want to consider an HK, you might want to contact Telecity Electronics , they don't like to advertise their prices but when you go in person, they always seem to know what all the competitors are asking(they have a list of their prices I believe) and undercut them. I picked up my Samsung there at an excellent price. You could contact Kennedy HiFi, Kromer Radio, Bay Bloor Radio or East Hamilton Radio and see what they could do for you. Good luck.

Just thought I'd second Adrian's opinion Audio Video Unlimited. My local shop I have referred to in this forum is a member of this chain and I have had the same experience on pricing as Adrian. Except for my Axiom's that's where all my equipment has come from. In addition to good pricing they all know their stuff, so it's not like you're dealing with the FS or BB sales guy who really doesn't understand what he's trying to sell you

Sorry to hear that Fred! That's two expensive Bangs for us. With my last name being akin to Murphy's Laws, I just come to expect these things and take them in stride but I feel bad for you.

Perhaps you can take solace in the old saying we use on the trails... "There is no such thing as breakage, just opportunities for upgrades."

The old receiver is still dead, so...

After all my deliberations, it turns out the local store had a floor model 2808 they were blowing out. Just what the doctor ordered.

I get my pre-outs, 2 12v triggers and a little more juice. The trade off is a slightly older scaler and only 2 HDMI in, but I don't expect to have a lot of HDMI components that need to be hooked in.

OK not sure what receiver you have, but did you try a manual reset? Some other guy on the SC-05/SC-07 forum on the other forum just had a power outage. His receiver was just blinking one light afterwards and would not come back on. Well the thread had a way to force a reset of the receiver and that fixed it.

It basically went into a safe mode due to the power surge and won't come out on its own. Not sure if something like that exists for your receiver

For backup, you should look at http://www.carbonite.com. Not a bad solution. But keep in mind that to recover *EVERYTHING* it may take a few days or more.

Sorry to hear you lost your amp; I get a cold shiver every time I see dark clouds (every day here!). On that note, has anyone ever cashed in on the insurance policy most decent surge protectors have? Mine say $25K, which would cover the goods, but I have never heard of anyone actually collecting?

We're still waiting to hear back from Vassillios, to see what Monster/insurance does about his system. I think we're all curious about this subject....well that, plus the chicken/egg thing.

Monster.....teeheee.......snicker.......

Good Luck! You will be lucky that they don't sue you for typing out their name in your insurance claim request.

Well, progress. I now have sound again! Yipeee!!

I was prepared for a complicated menu system and confusing manual, but it still took a full 15 minutes to get sound even when the receiver powered up with the tuner as the sellected source.

No amount of random button pushing got me there (that usually works for the simple suff. I actually had to consult the manual (3 separate pages no less) to find the right screen on the upper section of the remote so I could adjust the tuner and get the volume to respond.

To put this in perspective, years ago I worked for a medical imaging development company. I found it easier to figure out the softare for 3d tracking of sugical instruments (for brain surgery) than I do this receiver.

Now off to figure out how to enable optical in to get my HTPC connected. Should only be a couple of hours or so...

Which receiver did you get?

Denon 2808 floor model.

I am starting another thread on setup. ...

Sorry to hear about the dead receiver, but sometimes stuff like this is a blessing in disguise...

I was about to recommend AVU as well but it looks like you already picked up a nice unit. I will be in the market myself shortly as I just sold my Onkyo 505... Time to upgrade to something with more HDMI ins and that will process the new audio codecs via HDMI.