Yamaha RX-V2065

Yamaha RX-V2065 Review

With the RX-V2065, Yamaha giveth, and Yamaha taketh away: This moderately high-end A/V receiver delivers innovation and a long list of features that would make any home-theater enthusiast drool. Yet there are some head-scratching omissions from an otherwise solid feature set that left us puzzled. The top end of Yamaha’s new RX-V65 line boasts a feature set that will leave home-theater buffs drooling: There are five HDMI inputs and two HDMI outputs; 1080p video upscaling from any video input source; a front-panel USB port; an HD Radio tuner; audio support for two additional zones; Burr-Brown 192kHz/24-bit DACs (and a digital output if you have a favorite outboard decoder); Ethernet networking support with DLNA certification; and an amplifier capable of supplying 130 watts to seven channels. What’s more, the list doesn’t end there. The RX-V2065 has a phono input; an RS-232 port to accommodate a high-end third-party remote control; a 12-volt trigger; infrared remote inputs and outputs; and eight-channel analog inputs and pre-amp outputs. But some of the features we expect to see in a $1,400 receiver are also missing, including onboard video signal processing, the ability to assign the digital audio inputs (of which there are only two optical and two coaxial), and the ability to pair the multi-channel input with HDMI video (you can pair it with any of the four composite or two component video inputs—there are no S-Video inputs or outputs).