My Onkyo TX-SR605 (a reasonably modern home A/V receiver, purchased about 3 years ago) suddenly doesn't work. Well, it works, but the HDMI inputs/outputs don't. Googling and forum searching suggests that having the HDMI board go bad on Onkyo receivers is not unheard of, especially in the era I purchased mine. The receiver is well out of warranty, so any potential repair would be done at my cost, and the "regional repair center" is located in Syracuse, NY, so I'd have to pay for shipping to and fro, plus whatever they want for parts and labor.

A newer but comparable Onkyo model, with more HDMI inputs and a more modern HDMI spec (1.4 instead of 1.3) would run me about $250 if I shop around. My worst nightmare is I pay to have the HDMI board replaced or something and then something else goes wrong with it, so as much as I hate the idea of throwing away (well, recycling) a 3 year-old receiver that cost me $400, I'm wondering if sending it out for repair is wise.

For now, I've just routed all of my video components through my TV's inputs and then routed the TV audio out to my receiver via optical. This works, but having HDMI straight through was convenient and made switching inputs/powering everything on/off a lot easier. The current setup requires a lot of shuffling with different remotes to switch from my PS3 to my DVR or MP3 player.

I've always had good experiences with Onkyo components in the past, but this experience may cause me to consider other brands. If I do, anyone have any 7.1 channel receivers in the sub-$500 range they recommend?

Maybe just look for a local electronics repair shop? He'll probably give you an estimate.

Yes.

I'm with Tony. At the $250 price point, there's no point in shelling out for repairs. If you're trying to minimize your expenditures, you might consider finding another Onkyo unit of the same vintage, used on eBay or something, and perhaps cannibalizing them together into one working unit.

DIY repair worked for me when I had a problem with my old TV. As always, your mileage may vary.

Or, just buy the $250 new unit and be happy.

Yeah, it's just depressing. I've heard of "software as service", but "hardware as service" just doesn't seem right. I'm not really purchasing electronics to own them -- I'm just renting them until they invariably break within five years and require a repair that nobody will do because the broken component somehow costs more than the product itself cost when it came out.

Further Googling led me to people who were quoted $450 from Onkyo for this repair (assuming it's the HDMI board.) Another guy said he'd personally seen hundreds of Onkyo receivers suffering from the same problem.

Maybe Onkyo has just become a shit brand like all of the rest, and I ought to just suck it up and invest in something high-end that will last. Or maybe they're all shit at this point.

If you're really going to dispose of it, I could put it to use at the mission. I don't need HDMI as long as it works as a regular stereo audio amplifier.

It's not just the broken component, it's the cost of labour to diagnose, and repair. We're a long way from the time when appliances were trivial enough that anyone armed with a screwdriver and a basic understanding of electricity could pop them open to make repairs.

Its ~11.5kg so I'd expect the shipping to be pretty horrendous to where you are.

Actually, my experience is the opposite.

I try to repair anything that breaks or stops working around here. Usually the failures are relatively simple and obvious, and anyone with (1970's) high-school level skills really ought to be capable of it.

Electronics in particular, almost always fail due to ageing electrolytic capacitors. Frequently they bulge at the top or pop open, making the failure really obvious.

It's just a matter of keeping one's basic skills relevant to the times.
If I cannot fix it, then only rarely will I shell out money for someone else to do so.

Cheers

It depends. If its modular enough then you can get by with just limited knowledge and enough skill not to stab yourself in the hand with the screwdriver.

Tony has a fairly good idea of what is wrong and how to fix it just from reading other accounts. The problem is that the spare part is just way too expensive to order to just give it a go. If you mean getting to the level where you're actually replacing components on the board then thats pretty much gone unless its a simple or easy to diagnose fault.

Most repair places just throw out the entire module/board and get a new one now since its just not worth spending hours/days poking at a board with schematics that consist of some massive black box ICs and a handful of components. The basic checks would be to see that everything is getting power. Any analog stages are working. The big ICs are getting some kind of input. If that all passes then chances are that something has died within the big ICs.

I have a Denon that is around 8 years old (I think I got it when I got the house) and still going strong. I don't know how many features their under $500 stuff has, but their upper end receivers have a pretty decent feature set.

I had the same thing happen to my 605 last spring. Fortunately I was still within my warranty. Before getting the repair, I scoured the web, and AVSForum had many people with the same experience. Basically the design on that model led to too much heat buildup, damaging the HDMI board. After mine was repaired I added two 120mm fans to keep mine cool. I'm hoping I get another 3-4 years out of it.

As mine was under warranty, I don't know the exact cost, but I've seen people saying the same as you, $450 or so. At that cost I'd get a new one. If you do stick with Onkyo, from what I have seen the problem was related to that generation. New models are better designed.

I can't speak to whether Onkyo is crap or not, but I can say that keeping my stereo rack cool was a design priority, since my wife insisted that we not see any of the gear in the cabinet.

As I mentioned on the secondary-gadget thread, I bought a CoolerGuys kit which is now built into my stereo cabinet. My amp is a Pioneer SC-25 (the new one is the SC-35 or SC-37), using class D amplifiers that are much more efficient and thus put out a lot less heat. Despite this, heat in the cabinet is enough that the fans will be running if I've had everything on for more than an hour.

We'll see how long everything lasts, in the end, but I decided to make cooling be a priority.

I don't think you're going to find much quality difference between brands and models at the $200 to $500 price point. Once you pass the $1000 mark you're likely going to find more differentiation.

I probably wouldn't pay to repair an HDMI board on a product that was $400 three years ago if a similar spec current product was $250. If the repair were free or less than $30, maybe. But you'll end up paying more than $30 just for round-trip shipping.

If I may contribute, I knew my Onkyo TX-SR876 was going to run warm, and it lives behind the doors of a closed front, open backed cabinet.

From new in June 2009 ($1200), I installed an Antec A/V Cooler which sits right on top of the Onkyo. Fan speed is set to low, and it powers up when the receiver turns on.

It draws air from the top of the Onkyo into the Antec fans, then exhausts out the rear. Having the Antec running on low makes a noticeable difference in the temperature of the receiver. With the doors closed, the fan is inaudible to me.

The Antec A/V Cooler is sturdy enough to have another AV component stacked on top, and I suppose you could use more than one in an equipment stack. It is powered by a simple power pack, which I plugged into the switched power output on the receiver.

So far I have been quite happy with both the Onkyo and the Antec A/V Cooler unit.

Tony, I just got a new receiver and I'm very happy with it. I have the Denon AVR-591. Of course, after I found it I was told about the Pioneer VSX-1020-K, which certainly seems more feature-packed. I feel like Denon might be slightly higher quality, but that could just be perceived branding

Wow, I guess I just had no idea cooling was important in a home theater setup. I did take care to make sure components aren't stacked right on top of each other and have adequate airflow where they vent, and my receiver has nothing on top of it at all. But I had no idea that the products were made such that you have to add cooling to keep them from melting down over time. That's pretty sad.

It turns out this is the second failure in as many weeks for my home theater setup. My DLP bulb died last week, and I had just gotten the replacement in about two hours before this new issue with the receiver occurred. I don't know how the two could possibly be related, but it is strange that they happened so closely in time.

Right now, I think I'm just going to continue to use the receiver as purely an audio device hooked up to my TV's optical output. It's not ideal, but I don't want to throw any more money at this right now if I don't have to. I can probably solve the hassles with switching inputs by getting a better universal remote that will send out macros with discrete input selection codes to the TV and receiver. It might actually be better this way in the long run, as I'll now have more inputs to play with on the receiver for audio devices.

In the past 20 years, I've lost two receivers to what appeared to be lightning strikes. The latter one, a fairly nice Onkyo purchased circa 2002, would develop a nice stream of acrid black smoke within seconds of plugging it in. Of course, this was post-warranty. I had it plugged into a Monster power strip (which also got zapped) and attempted to use Monster's warranty/insurance against exactly this sort of occurrence.

Unsurprisingly, Monster denied my claim, saying they didn't see any lightning damage in the old power strip. Yeah, because it went straight through and blew up my amp. But they did send me a brand new power strip. W00t.

Now I've got everything plugged into an ostensibly nicer TrippLite surge surpressor, also with insurance against damage to your gear. We'll see what happens at our next regularly scheduled power surge.

At least TrippLite, to my knowledge, isn't a notoriously awful company. They could be, but I haven't heard as much

I wonder if there are any good public relations stories about Monster out there. I've only heard bad ones, but apparently that hasn't hurt the company much, as long as they keep Best Buy happy...

The margins on Monster branded stuff is high so they'll just keep selling it despite it not being any better than the generic cable for 1/3rd the price. The generic stuff at the shops tend to be sold out as well unsurprisingly.

I've only heard a handful of stories where the insurance for those power strips have actually paid out. The vast majority have had them all worm out of the agreement via some loophole. The best one seems to be that they can't pay because you used the equipment without their super duper ultra power strip at some point in time and therefore it accumulated some unseen damage from that already.

Yeah I'm aware of that. That's why I said they need to keep Best Buy happy. What's keeping Best Buy from simply replacing all of Monster's stuff with their own Geek Squad cables with equal or greater margins because they don't have to pay Monster? They already have some of their own cables, but they haven't swapped it all out.

The only Monster product I've owned is one of those mini power strips. It's actually a very nice product. I would have bought something else but at the time nobody else made something like it.

Monster have really good advertising I guess. Its the "premium" brand that everybody knows about.

I'll certainly never buy Monster again. Of course, I'm running everything with generic HDMI cables (3 for $10 at Fry's, but you have to look in the computer section, not anywhere near the TV sets), speaker wire from Home Depot (12ga for $0.50/ft.), and other analog cables are Radio Shack's "Gold" line.

Amusement: for a friend's setup, we bought that bag 'o three HDMI cables. Turned out, one of them was defective, which manifested itself as white snow over the video feed. Replacing the cable solved the problem. I don't know the real defect rate with HDMI cables, but I don't buy any of these quality arguments that Monster et al. make. Either it works or it doesn't. It's digital.

I buy all my cables at Monoprice. I won't buy anything locally.

I have to second monoprice, but for strictly cables, I also like DeepSurplus.com They even throw a bag of skittles into each order shipped. ;8^)

I also use and like DeepSurplus.com. The Skittles are a gimmick, but for some reason they make me happy every time I get an order.