How long have HD DVD and BD been on the drawing board? How long have companies known that these machines were coming, and that they’d be sporting new codecs like DD+, DD TrueHD, and DTS HD? And why haven’t any electronics firms taken that to heart and built a machine that could decode these formats?

These thoughts occured to me when I read about Rotel’s new a/v receiver with HDMI inputs. It seems to have all the bells and whistles. It’s missing two amplification channels for 7.1 surround, but that’s forgivable as not many people use 7 speakers anyway. It has lots of digital inputs, the usual surround modes, etc. (Though no mention is made of video transcoding, auto-EQ, or any fancy features like that.) It looks like a very capable machine, if you had no plans to purchase an HD DVD or BD player.

And that’s just the problem. If I were in the market for an AV receiver or pre/pro today, I’d come to the conclusion that there’s absolutely nothing out there I’d want to buy. Because nothing out there supports HDMI 1.3 with DD+, DD TrueHD, DTS HD, and DTS HD Master. These are the newfangled formats that promise better sound, and that are now arriving on the North American scene. I don’t want to use analog connections anymore. I want one HDMI connector from my BD or HD DVD player into my receiver. And one HDMI connector from my receiver to my HDTV. Is that too much to ask?

Right now, yes it is.

Rotel introduces new RSX-1057 surround-sound receiver with HDMI capability