Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Modular Onkyo Product!

The wave of the future? I want one

http://www.audioholics.com/news/industry/onkyo_pr_2004-02.htm

Oh Man! That is fabulous. Notice that it can drive 2 complete 7.1 surround speaker setups; has 2 HDMI inputs, and one HDMI output, 12 digital audio inputs (6 optical, 6 coaxial); 2 sets of inputs for universal players; and an Ethernet connection.

However, at $4000, I could buy a brand new, non-upgradeable, $1000 receiver every 3 years, and still stay current. So it wouldn't really start saving me money until after 12 years. At my age, that's a real crap shoot. Now if it cost $1500. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Ajax,

It's the ultimate tinker toy. I think if the technology catches on, the prices will drop.
Now if I had a "Bill Gates" budget......

LOL!

Big fat Marlon Brando hung on to the ripe old age of 80. Don't despair yet, Jack.

Home theater pc’s are the way of the future, for 4000$ you could build a home theater pc that would blow that Onkyo out of the water the only thing the Onkyo would have on a home theater pc is the fact that it has built in amps… but even still… you could spend 3k on a ht pc, and buy 2 5 channel amps, and connect the amps to the computer, and you would still have a FAR superior product. And with a computer base, it would be infinitely more upgradeable than then Onkyo, with one exchangeable daughter card… the receiver manufactures are having to come up with new stuff, to keep the market share, because as home theater computers are becoming more and more popular, and easy to build/use, I think the market will lean towards the ht pc vs the receiver market, I mean think about it, you get a few programs, you can have “near perfect audio” and near perfect video, though the processing power of the cpu in the computer… not to mention, if you have a few terabits of memory, which is not “that” expensive any more, you could have your ENTIRE dvd collection on your computer, hence, you would never have to search for that movie your kids misplaced so nicely for you…


But then again, I'm some what of a computer nerd, so for 4000$ me personally I would rather build a computer that could do much more than the Onkyo, and probably still come in at under 4k… but none the less, that is a damn fine unit… I saw that about 2 months ago… when I was surfing the net… its just not for me, personally…. Good find though.

If the tech doesn't catch on, on the other hand, prices will remain high until they decide to stop producing modules. If they ever produce any... This is the danger with this sort of thing. Dakkon was saying that HTPCs are the wave of the future. Personally, for some reason, I don't like it. I want my A/V, and I want my computers. I don't want them to be together. Maybe I'm just a luddite.

LOL! Good point! And in the girth department he made me look like Randy Johnson.

This not new, as there are several high end mfg'ers that offer modular upgrades to their products. Linn, SIMA (I believe) and YBA have offered upgrades to their products via this method.

However, this is probably the first mass market mfg'er to do so.

i also think its fair to say, the receiver will only be truly avail to the upper end buyers in the HT market.. it aint like your local joe-blow like us is gonna mosey on down to the local stereo store and ask for the "$4000 thousand dollar onkyo unit that washes your dishes"..

for the people even in the 'market' for a receiver with its abilities, price is not a concern!

bigjohn

interesting to see if this pans out... my guess is it will not. those of us old enough to remember the M class PCs that Compaq introduced that had daughter cards in them so that you could upgrade the box with a new card... failed miserably.

Price/per box ended up being cheaper than the daughter card upgrades. Plus, the surrounding technology couldn't accomodate the daughter card enough to keep up with surrounding competitor products. Interesting decision of Onkyo's. looks like a costly mistake to me. What's the ticker symbol for Onkyo, better place that short order.

Hmm.. how I don't understand how my fellows "value seakers" on this board might be so excited about $4000 AVR?