Amp/Receiver advice
 

My wife got me a new receiver for Christmas and I'm not sure if I should set it up. We have a 12+ year old Optimus(Radio Shack brand) receiver that we have been using. It has no HDMI or other features - we connect our cable box, Blu-ray player and PC to it and it makes loud noise through our 3.1 speaker setup. Works fine but nothing special. The new receiver is a Pioneer Elite VSX-42 which seems to be a good model but she paid $450 for it.

I have been looking at the Yamaha RX-V373 and RX-V473 working under the assumptions that Yamaha is a solid brand, anything modern (and decent) will sound at least as good as the Optimus and that I can do what I want for under $400.

My biggest goal is to be able to plug each device into the amp, run HDMI to the TV (Toshiba LCD) and have sound from the speakers with video on the TV.

Can anyone tell me if there a reason to keep the Pioneer over a Yamaha RX-V373 or RX-V473? Thanks in advance.

'Wow, honey, this amp is even better than the one I was looking at, and I can't believe you spent so much on me. You're too good to me.'

Right - I'm not ungrateful - just that she was worried that she spent too much and got the wrong thing. If I can save $100 or $200 she will be happier. I don't know if this one is better - that's the question I am asking. I also see that it is $350 on Amazon

Really I would love to open it and start playing with it, but she asked me to make sure it was what I wanted before opening it.

Return it, order from Amazon, everyone is happy.

I just got myself a Yamaha RX-V673. Haven't even plugged it in yet.

But without knowing shit about receivers, from the research I did I figured the Yamaha gave me the best features for the best price. Not sure how that figures out for the models you are looking at.