Yamaha's RX-V1700, has been a big seller over the last 12 months, so it's no great surprise to learn that their brand new RX-V1800 is based on the same successful formula. In fact, take a 1700, give it two more HDMI inputs (so it has four in total), make it fully compatible with HDMI 1.3, give it 1080p upscaling, improve its compressed music enhancing system, and you've got yourself an RX-V1800. True, the 1800 costs £100 more than the outgoing model's RRP, but in reality, you're getting pretty good value for your money. The only downside, is Yamaha's insistence on producing this in just one finish i.e. titanium. It's very smart, but doesn't help anyone who wants a black amp - for that, you'd need to look at Onkyo's class leading TX-SR875, or Denon's superb AVR-3808.
The new Yamaha is under far more presure than its outgoing brother ever was, thanks to the two amps we've just mentioned, but we still expect the 1800 to do well this season.
Higher speed: Although all previous versions of HDMI have had more than enough bandwidth to support all current HDTV formats, HDMI 1.3 increases its single-link bandwidth to 340 MHz (10.2 Gbps) to support the demands of future HD display devices, such as higher resolutions, Deep Color and high frame rates. In addition, built into the HDMI 1.3 specification is the technical foundation that will let future versions of HDMI reach significantly higher speeds.
Deep Color: HDMI 1.3 supports 10-bit, 12-bit and 16-bit (RGB or YCbCr) color depths, up from the 8-bit depths in previous versions of the HDMI specification, for stunning rendering of over one billion colors in unprecedented detail.
Broader color space: HDMI 1.3 adds support for “x.v.Color™” (which is the consumer name describing the IEC 61966-2-4 xvYCC color standard), which removes current color space limitations and enables the display of any color viewable by the human eye.
New mini connector: With small portable devices such as HD camcorders and still cameras demanding seamless connectivity to HDTVs, HDMI 1.3 offers a new, smaller form factor connector option.
Lip Sync: Because consumer electronics devices are using increasingly complex digital signal processing to enhance the clarity and detail of the content, synchronization of video and audio in user devices has become a greater challenge and could potentially require complex end-user adjustments. HDMI 1.3 incorporates automatic audio synching capabilities that allows devices to perform this synchronization automatically with total accuracy.
New HD lossless audio formats: In addition to HDMI’s current ability to support high-bandwidth uncompressed digital audio and all currently-available compressed formats (such as Dolby® Digital and DTS®), HDMI 1.3 adds additional support for new lossless compressed digital audio formats Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio™.
