Posting this (as a debate) because recently I've become quite frustrated with the pointless stuff hurled at AV receivers and the reality seems to be that you can no longer buy a quality receiver (IE one that receives and amplifies) without paying for about 100 additional bells and whistles, most of which you will never use as your smart TV and various other bits of kit do the same thing.
In my position, I simply want a powerful, solid and well made receiver to take an optical feed from my TV and give 5.1 sound. Basically, I don't need any of the visual abilities of the receiver. And why would I? Like most I now stream music via my TV (spotify etc) or via lossless audio into the TV USB port. Do I need a receiver that also streams and has a USB port? Nope... And 5/6 HDMI in, 2/3 HDMI out on the top receivers? Really!? Everything I want to watch is either fed direct to the smart TV or can be streamed to it from PC - including 4k for movies.
I'm aware there are exceptions, and some people genuinely do use receivers to link everything. But the vast majority use them to process sound - the end. So why is no one making a receiver that focuses purely on receiving, (and/or decoding) and amplifying sound? Why can't I buy the guts of a £2000 receiver in a more basic package for £1000?
The root of my grumble, is that it seems patently obvious that for the last many years the Smart TV revolution has meant most people that would buy a top end receiver already have much of the functionality in their TV and various other devices.
I'm aware that audio only receivers are available and that I could externally amp the output.. But why no decent, solid, single box solution for stereo and surround sound handling? Do I really need to be able to stream Spotify from my phone to my tv to my amp, or direct to my tv to my amp, or to blu-ray player to my tv to my amp, or direct from blu-ray player to my amp? No. But I already have all these choices. Yet for some reason all top end receivers seem keen to bang on about how I can now also hook my amp up to spotify directly.. And that's just Spotify, but the principal of duplicated ability applies to so much of what we apparently have to pay for these days.
Rant over