Multiroom 5.1 possible?

[hooj]

I've been asked by a friend to sort out his AV in a newly purchased house.

They have two rooms wired for 5.1 which both feed back to the same cabinet.

My question is are there any receivers out there that can output two HDMI feeds (from different sources simultaneously) aswell as the associated 5.1 audio from each source? I have a feeling that anything that does will be massively expensive and it would be cheaper to go with 2 mid range receivers.

Thanks in advance.

 

[dante01]

There are several AV receivers with second zone HDMI capabilities. Such a receiver would have a dedicated second zone HDMI output that can passthrough any HDMI source connected to the receiver. The source being passed through can be a different one to that being used in the main room. The second zone output of the main receiver is connected to an HDMI input on the second zone receiver in order to convey the signal to the sexond zone. The second zone speakers would need to be connected to the second zone AV receiver. If not using a multichannel AV receiver in the second zone then the audio would be limited to the audio capabilities og the HDMI device the feed is being sent to.

You are sharing the HDMI sources in the main room connected to the main room receiver with another room, not the audio processing and the amplification of the main room receiver!

The cheapest receiver with second HDMI zone capabilities is the Pioneer VSX930 for about £400. The next cheapest would be Sony's STRDN1060 for about £450 and then you'd have to start paying quite a lot more for the other models that have this capability. Other models include:

Denon AVRX3200W, AVRX4200W, AVRX6200W and AVRX7200WA
Marantz SR6010 and SR7200
Yamaha's RXA2050 and RXA3050