Audio Video News

Onkyo continues to upgrade its line of receivers, today adding the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink HT-RC370 and just slightly less fully spec'd HT-RC360 ($849 and $549 respectively) to its 7.2 lineup, smoothing the feathers of those audio and videophiles who might have felt left out by last week's announcement of the music-only, decidedly retro TX-8050 stereo receiver.

Despite the almost overwhelming degree of connectivity on display here in the RC370, as was clear with the 8050, Onkyo is putting the accent on streaming media. The usual suspects-Pandora, Rhapsody, SiriusXM, among others-are here (Onkyo's commitment to media sources in the cloud is also clear in the native support it rolled out last week for Spotify in the European market), along with DLNA certification, USB connectivity (for iOS or other devices, including USB hard drives), ethernet, and support for Onkyo's UWF-1 802.11b/g/n adapter so you can take advantage of the media that might currently be scattered around your local network.

Further blurring the line between media player, receiver, and controller, Onkyo's Remote app lets you configure your iOS device (assuming you're not using it as a media source) as a remote for all of these newly announced receivers (and for any networked Onkyo A/V receiver released in 2009 or later).

These things are definitely more than collections of gozintas and gozouttas, though they're of course well spec'd in those departments: Marvell Qdeo 4K processing on the HDMI inputs (6 of 'em on the RC370), with upscaling to 4K (supporting yet-to-come 4K consumer formats, or maybe for watching dailies from your RED), and Burr-Brown/TI PCM1690 DACs on all audio output channels. The 370 adds (along with a fuller complement of analog video connections and preamplifer outputs) THX Select2 Plus certification, and includes Audyssey's MultEQ XT audio processing to manage your speaker setup and compensate for your room.

- Michael Berk