Onkyo HT-RC180

Onkyo HT-RC180 Review

Onkyo has a well-earned reputation for building A/V receivers with fabulous price/performance ratios, and at first glance, the feature-laden HT-RC180 looks to be no exception. But we can’t recommend this 7.2-channel receiver to anyone who owns a home theater PC or an older DVD-Audio player because the HT-RC180 lacks the multi-channel analog inputs needed to establish a proper audio connection with those devices. Strangely, we can’t understand the disconnect between consumer electronics manufacturers and PC manufacturers, as it’s not as though home theater PCs are new. And yet this is the third new receiver we’ve encountered this year that doesn’t take PC audio connections into account. The HDMI input on Sherwood’s RD-7503 won’t sync properly with a PC’s HDMI video output, so it will never work with a PC. Yamaha’s RX-V665 won’t allow you to assign its multi-channel audio input to its HDMI video input. The only solution, at least for the Yamaha and Onkyo, is to invest $200 to $250 in an HDMI PC sound card, which – in the latter case – may make the system a hard sell.