Sony: First A/V receiver to optimize Blu-ray discs - STR-DG1000 [update 1]

Sony. Not exactly what most would call high-end audio. But talk about video and many would. Their newest receiver is designed to work hand-in-hand with Blu-ray. (pic to the top is of Sony's Blu-ray player, and we will replace it with a pic of the receiver whenever Sony returns our emails...) Many of Blu-ray's advantages lies around HDMI and this receiver was designed with that in mind. The STR-DG100 has two HDMI ports (HDCP compliant) which allows for 1080p pass-through and up-scaling from the other video sources to 1080i. The HDMI ports will also carry up to 8 channels of digital audio which the receiver will rock out at 120 watts per channel. The receiver also sports XM Connect and Play and a mode that helps with digital audio found on MP3 players. The Portable Audio Enhancer takes that compressed audio and improves its clarity and depth by adding "info" to the audio signal. This bad boy will be available in August for $800.

So who will be the first one to give up their Onkyo or Marantz receiver to gain HDMI HDCP-compliant 1080p audio/video processing? Not us - not yet.

UPDATE: This thing is missing something. If it is optimized for Blu-ray, where is the support for DTS-HD or Dolby TrueHD? There is no mention of these at all in the press release. Lets hope that Sony just forgot to include that paragraph of these lossless audio formats.