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>> Hi, I'm Matthew Moskovciak, Senior Associate Editor at CNET.com and this is the Yamaha RX-V663. Now this is a midrange AV receiver and it includes most of the basic features that you'd expect to see in this price class. It has onboard decoding for both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio and if you flip it around back you'll see it has a two HDMI inputs and an HDMI output, which is capable of upconverting analog signals to 480p. Now that sounds pretty good, but if you compare it to other receivers in its price class, it's actually a little lacking. Most receivers actually include three or four HDMI inputs and they also offer analog upconversion all the way up to 1080i or 1080p. The other thing that we didn't like about the Yamaha was its confusing rear panel lay out. All the audio inputs were on one side and all the video inputs were on the other side. So when you're connecting your gear, you're going to have a little bit of a nest of cables behind there. Now the one thing we couldn't complain about on the RX-V663 was its sound quality. We actually found it sounded pretty good compared to the other receivers in the price class, so this is one area where it stood out. However, even with the great sound quality, we found it hard to recommend the Yamaha given its paltry HDMI connectivity and some of its design quirks. I'm Matthew Moskovciak, from CNET.com and this is the Yamaha RX-V663.
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