Looking for suggestions for an entertainment system switcher/receiver

Mathew Burrack

Hi all! Hopefully I'm posting this in the right sub-forum.

Anyway, I'm trying to set up my living/game/entertainment room and I'm looking for The One Switcher/Receiver To Rule Them All. I have a few particular requirements, and as such I'm finding it *very* difficult to find what I need online, so I'm hoping someone here can point me in the right direction!

What I have:

- 4k HDR TV (LG) with a sound bar mounted on the wall
- One HDMI cable running from it to an adjacent wall. I don't want more cables than that (I had to fight my wife about the inevitability of the one after I failed to get a cable run through the wall)
- The adjacent wall is where I want All The Things hooked up. Xbox, Switch, Apple TV, Retropie, all my systems. In particular:
- I have 5 devices that are HDMI (one is 4K HDR, the others just straight up 1080p)
- I have three more that are classic consoles (Genesis, SNES, Gamecube). Ideally I want these all on component cables, because from what I can tell it's the second-best choice for signal quality on these (the highest would be SCART, but that seems to go WAY into the weeds about building a setup).

So that's 8 inputs total, three of them component cables, and one HDMI-with-sound output.

Eventually, *maybe*, I'd add surround sound speakers, but running the speaker wire in a nice way right now would be troublesome, so while it would be nice to have the option to add those in at some point in the future, it's totally not a requirement and if I end up with a switcher without speaker output, I'm fine. Either way, I want to be able to just use the audio-out on the HDMI for now (since it passes through to the sound bar).

The big thing is that I don't want 5 different switchers to have to find the right input. I want one device, one input switch, and I'm done. I've gone with the array of switchers before in the past and ugh.

Things I've looked at so far:
- Going with a high-end receiver, like the Yamaha RX-A3080. It has two component inputs, so for the third I'd ether just live with AV RCA input (ugh) or get a separate upscaler to plug the last one into an HDMI port.
- Go with separate upscalers for all three classic systems and just go with an 8-input switcher, like the IOGEAR DCI 4K 8 x 1 HDMI Switcher

I'm way out of my depth in trying to figure this out, and moreso I'm finding it difficult finding good sources of info online. So I'm hoping the good folks here can offer some advice or have solved similar problems in the past and know of good products to go with!

Shadowfire

I'm going to preface this with a what the fuck are you doing followed by a I want to do that and a little bit of ooh this is kinda rough. No one uses component anymore. I know that's what you want to do, but just be prepared for to lay out bucks for whatever you're doing. Which, judging by the links you've put in here you're already planning on.

The IOGEAR switcher you linked will do what you want, but as you pointed out you would need to add a bunch of upscalers which creates extra points of failure in your system. Also additional gear that needs outlets. With the number of older systems you have in your setup that means more wall warts, which means figuring out how to get enough power squids back there to do the job. Not a deal breaker, but it can be a pain in the ass.

So let's talk about receivers. That's a lot of money for something that you're not even using for sound! But hey, let's run with it. That Yamaha is nice enough, and I'll rarely shit talk Yamaha sound because fuck yeah, Yamaha! But for that $1500-2000 you're into Marantz money, and the SR6014/U1B will do the same thing as the Yamaha you mentioned but with a boost in quality.

One other thing to consider is how you're going to control this. A good Harmony remote will handle what you're doing, but you'd have to go with something like the Elite because your equipment is on a different wall than your TV. Otherwise you're in URC territory which yeouch.

Mathew Burrack

Shadowfire wrote: »

I'm going to preface this with a what the fuck are you doing followed by a I want to do that and a little bit of ooh this is kinda rough. No one uses component anymore. I know that's what you want to do, but just be prepared for to lay out bucks for whatever you're doing. Which, judging by the links you've put in here you're already planning on.

Yeah, I figured this wasn't going to be cheap. I've been holding off on this project for a *very* long time, and now that it's finally time I'm intending to do this right to last "forever" (as long as "forever" actually is in tech).

The general restriction is that the TV is mounted on a wall where I can't get through to run in-wall cables without a *ton* of mess/heartache, and the wall where it's mounted doesn't have room for the entertainment center otherwise (I'm intentionally being cagey here; hopefully, once this is finally all said and done, I can actually be proud enough of the results to post pictures :~) So that leaves me with wanting to run minimal cables from the TV to all the devices, which is why I went to running a *single* HDMI from the TV to a switcher, since the switcher itself can be on the entertainment center wall.

As for component: the issue is the three classic consoles: a SNES, Gamecube, and Genesis 1. In all three cases, I have not found any ideal direct-to-HDMI solutions that don't require breaking open the console itself and soldering things, which I really don't want to do (the SNES and Genesis are both my original systems my parents bought me when I was young, so there's some personal attachment on top of the nostalgia there). From what I understand, the highest quality solution all three support is RGB-SCART, which from there can be converted to HDMI, but apparently it's quite tricky to find a decent converter, and getting an SCART cable for a Genesis 1 is doubly difficult. By contrast, component cables are super easy to obtain, and are the second-best quality solution from what I understand...

Shadowfire wrote: »

The IOGEAR switcher you linked will do what you want, but as you pointed out you would need to add a bunch of upscalers which creates extra points of failure in your system. Also additional gear that needs outlets. With the number of older systems you have in your setup that means more wall warts, which means figuring out how to get enough power squids back there to do the job. Not a deal breaker, but it can be a pain in the ass.

Yeah, I'm already expecting to have to have a few power strips hidden in the entertainment center for all the bricks. I would need three upscalers if I go with a pure HDMI switcher like the IOGEAR. The additional points of failure though are indeed something to consider, good point.

Shadowfire wrote: »

So let's talk about receivers. That's a lot of money for something that you're not even using for sound! But hey, let's run with it. That Yamaha is nice enough, and I'll rarely shit talk Yamaha sound because fuck yeah, Yamaha! But for that $1500-2000 you're into Marantz money, and the SR6014/U1B will do the same thing as the Yamaha you mentioned but with a boost in quality.

I would love to go with one of the cheaper Yamaha solutions, but from what I can see, none of the cheaper options come with two component inputs (and I'm preferring three if I could get them, per above). I know zilch about Marantz, but I'll look into that, thanks for the suggestion!

And yeah, it certainly seems like overkill if I'm not actually using the speaker output portion of the receiver, but I *MIGHT* eventually invest in a good surround sound setup. Just...not yet (being able to switch between all my devices and use them all is higher priority than having good sound output for just one or two, so for budget reasons I'd rather invest in the receiver now and get the speakers to upgrade the audio setup later)

Shadowfire wrote: »

One other thing to consider is how you're going to control this. A good Harmony remote will handle what you're doing, but you'd have to go with something like the Elite because your equipment is on a different wall than your TV. Otherwise you're in URC territory which yeouch.

Yeah, I'm actually thinking of some sort of IFFFT remote selector setup, which is getting even more insane and pie-in-the-sky, but again, it'll be worth it if I can pull all this off... (he says once again being cagey)

Thanks for all the input though! I'm going to go research Marantz and see what that looks like...

Mathew Burrack

Actually, @Shadowfire question about the Marantz (or the Yamaha equivalent for that matter): it has two component inputs and a component output...does it *only* switch the component inputs to component out, or will it upscale the component input to HDMI out, do you know?

Shadowfire

Everything on the input side should output to any of the HDMI ports. Those receivers are designed to be able to output to multiple TVs, or a TV and a projector, all through just one cable for each output.

Donovan Puppyfucker

Holy jesus ye gods why on Earth?

The 3080 costs more than my entire entertainment system all by itself.

Do you know the 880 has 7 HDMI inputs and 1 component and 1 composite input?

And it's a third of the price!

Mathew Burrack

chrishallett83 wrote: »

Holy jesus ye gods why on Earth?

The 3080 costs more than my entire entertainment system all by itself.

Do you know the 880 has 7 HDMI inputs and 1 component and 1 composite input?

And it's a third of the price!

8 devices, of which 5 are HDMI and 3 are classic systems where component video would be the second best quality choice, followed a long way down by composite.

I suppose I *could* upconvert two of the 3 classic systems using separate scalers, but if I'm going to do that, why not just go with the IOGEAR and use separate scalers for all 3?

I agree the price looks insane, but I also know next to nothing in this area, so I just kinda assumed that was par for the course...

Mvrck

I don't know if you're in or near a major city, but in my experience audiophiles cycle equipment a lot. You may be able to find something you want used (or at the very least, it's super easy to pick up surround system speakers pretty cheap). 4k HDR may disqualify most of the used market though.

Mathew Burrack

Thanks for the advice Mvrck! Good idea! But yeah, the 4k HDR requirement might narrow my choices there...

So let's go a different route. The only reason I was looking at the receiver, like I said, is because it would scale up component video for me in a single box, but as some have noted, I have to go super expensive to even have two component connections (and I really need three).

So if I go with the switch instead, the IOGEAR switch price is considerably cheaper, and all I need are the separate scalers.

Yes, they're additional points of failure, but a. I don't have to buy them right away, which means I get to spread the cost out more, and b. I can replace them individually over time. So it's just a matter of finding a decent one to aim for.

Amazon has a *plethora* of random-brand component-to-HDMI upscalers. Anyone have a specific recommendation of one that works well for them?