It’s a ton of fun for those of us who are HDMI only. For just $300 you can get a receiver with 4 HDMI ports and HD audio decoding. If they kept the analog circuits, it would raise the price.
For the component crowd who may find this post, it may be better to search in the used AVR market where you can get great receivers that will feature component connections and analog inputs for HD audio. Remember, there is only one current source for HD audio. Blu-ray. So, you only need a single connection able to handle it making those analog ports perfect for the new format, while still allowing your AVR to handle the old lossy DD and DTS codecs for everything else you attach.
