Sherwood says that rather than having a $4000 unit become obselete with a new HDMI standard, they have a low cost option of external switcher. The flaw with this arguement is that it is not the version of HDMI that is important, it is the feature set of the processor; HDMI is fully backward compatible with all previous releases of HDMI and DVI (for video only for DVI). The connectors will also be the same. When a device with HDMI 1.3 sends lossless compressed digital audio formats (Dolby True-HD and DTS-HD) to a receiver with HDMI 1.1 or 1.2, these formats will not be available because the receiver does not support these newer features in its processor. However, the source device with HDMI 1.3 will still be able to transfer DD/DTS 5.1 to the receiver. Having an external switcher that is much cheaper to change than a receiver does not change the fact that the Sherwood receiver still does not have the feature set to support the capability for HDMI 1.3 or any HDMI version. So, I do not understand the argument of paying extra for an external HDMI switcher that will not prevent a receiver from becoming obselete.
