Satellite radio, born in the automobile, is doing whatever it takes to get into your home — and that includes sneaking through the door inside one of Yamaha’s new home-theater receivers.
Yamaha’s RX-V457 ($350), part of a four-receiver lineup available this month, has built-in XM Satellite Radio technology. Add an XM Connect-And-Play home antenna ($50, not included), sign up for the XM Satellite service ($12.95 monthly), and you’ll have more than 150 advertising-free, digital radio channels at your fingertips.
The RX-V457 is a 6.1-channel receiver rated at 85 watts a channel that will power six speakers and deliver a signal to a subwoofer, the point-1 part of the home theater. It has fewer digital connections than the other models and, unlike the other three, cannot “upconvert” video signals from, say, a basic composite-connection quality to high-grade component video.
Technophobe alert: The top two models, the $650 RX-V757 and the $550 RX-V657, are 7.1-channel receivers with a feature called Yamaha Parametric Room Acoustic Optimizer, a complicated name for something that greatly simplifies setting up your home theater.
For more information, visit www.yamaha.com.
