First off, it is marantz, you pay more for marantz due to quality (compare the case to other crappy plastic ones. $349 is not bad for what you get, find me a HDMI 1.3 switcher with 6 inputs, 2 parallel outputs and the biggy... the RS-232 input, a must for true automation. On top of that, it probably has auto-switching and describe codes, that if you have a good universal remote you would know how important it is. Other current companies that make quality HDMI switches like Gefen, are up there in price also. The cheap and crappy switches that you can get at Monoprice are cheap for a reason, either they are manual switching, their auto switching sucks or worse... they have major issues with the HDCP handshake.
@Vasco
If it is the standard high end component width, it is so wide because it is able to be rack mountable. Plus, higher end home theater components stick to a standard width of about 18", something the cheap home theater components don't seem to do.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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@ark_v2
First off, it is marantz, you pay more for marantz due to quality (compare the case to other crappy plastic ones. $349 is not bad for what you get, find me a HDMI 1.3 switcher with 6 inputs, 2 parallel outputs and the biggy... the RS-232 input, a must for true automation. On top of that, it probably has auto-switching and describe codes, that if you have a good universal remote you would know how important it is. Other current companies that make quality HDMI switches like Gefen, are up there in price also. The cheap and crappy switches that you can get at Monoprice are cheap for a reason, either they are manual switching, their auto switching sucks or worse... they have major issues with the HDCP handshake.
@Vasco
If it is the standard high end component width, it is so wide because it is able to be rack mountable. Plus, higher end home theater components stick to a standard width of about 18", something the cheap home theater components don't seem to do.