[Closed] AV receiver or stereo amp for home cinema?

Only thing to be wary of with Stereo is to ensure your source is outputting stereo and not 5.1 or 7.1 side sound. Personally I would suggest at least a 3 speaker set up: centre, front left and front right.

I have 5.1 wired into the living room. A decent centre makes a lot of difference. I don't think I would lose much by not having the B&W sub or the rear speakers in day to day viewing.

My amp is an 18 year old Yamaha with 5.1 and DTS but none of the modern Bluetooth or HDMI passthrough or upscaling. I basically take the optical out from my Panasonic TV and feed this straight to the amp. Works well.

Have a look on Richer for the cheapest Yamaha receiver that does what you want.  You've got upgrade options then, it's all HDMI-powered, and the "stereo amp is better" is the domain of beardy Hi-Fi nerds who worry about directional cables.

Sorry to be pedantic but if it's a stereo amp then its not home cinema. Home cinema is discreet surround as the soundtrack four the movie was recorded and intended.

But anyway back to the question, why not home cinema receiver...they play stereo too for music and discreet multi-channel surround for movies. Best of both worlds. It is no longer the case that "pound for pound" you'll get better sound quality from a stereo set up...at least not at sensible price points, maybe at the very upper ends of the scale at prices that are unaffordable to most of us. I didn't notice any difference going from a NAD stereo amp and decent stereo speakers to a mid range Denon home cinema receiver and the Kef Egg surround set up which was my first home cinema set up....in fact if anything it was better.

I think av receiver might be the way to go then. Thanks for the input.

After having various Cambridge Audio amp/AV receivers through a pair of Kef Q5 floorstanders on TV duty for a number of years, I would go AV receiver & surround sound. Recently got one of the mid-range Yamaha MusicCast receivers (rxv-683) from Richer Sounds and I'm very impressed. Currently adding various MusicCast streaming bits and bobs to make a full-on wireless audio household, and they all work perfectly. Miles cheaper than the Bose/Sonos gear with comparable sound quality and arguably more usability.

Get an Onkyo or Yamaha receiver, those two basically swap places at the top of the What HiFi best-of list every year, with Pioneer and Sony occasionally making a showing.

You can get a decent set of small satellites and a sub for reasonable sums, which will give you the benefit of the full surround soundtrack on films and tv programmes, and for playing music you switch the surround off to get stereo with the sub putting back the bass that small satellites lack.

My Yamaha amp and Sony satellites/sub are around twelve-fifteen years old, my minidisc and Cambridge DVD99 player are connected via TOSLink, as is my MacMini, and the whole lot sounds fine to me, I play music from iTunes via my Mac, controlled using Remote on my iPad or phone, either in shuffle mode or playing whole albums, or I play CD’s on the DVD player. Gives me all the flexibility I need, I don’t use any streaming services, I’ve got 200-odd Gb of music ripped to HDD, more than I can reasonably listen to, and I’m still buying CD’s! The DVD player can also play DVD-Audio and SACD discs as well, not that I’ve got very many...

^ Minidisc, lol 🙂

As above - get an AV receiver.  Just in terms of futureproofing they are worth it - you can't beat having that many options for connectivity.

Also - I would agree that the centre is the most important speaker for TV/movies - assuming you are not going for an out-the-box sat-sub speaker package (eg: kef eggs), certainly get a "full sized" centre.  Paired with a decent set of bookshelf speakers for the front channels will give you all most people need.  If you want to later, you can move the fronts to the rear, and replace them with floor-standers at the front.  If you are going for full size speakers - you really don't need a sub