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Sound United, the manufacturer of Denon and Marantz receivers, comes with two new, updated receivers with full HDMI 2.1 support. For the two existing models, the company has set up an upgrade program to make them HDMI 2.1 compatible.
Sound United heeft announced two updated versions of the existing Denon AVR-X8500H and Marantz AV8805 receiver. The new versions are the AVR-X8500HA and AV8805A, where the addition of the A is the designator for the upgrade. The existing models came out a few years ago and are flagship models, but had yet to make do with HDMI 2.0 support. At the time, it was already clear that a paid upgrade option to support HDMI 2.1 would be offered in the future.
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Owners of the Denon AVR-X8500H and Marantz AV8805 who wish to make use of this, can turn to authorized sales points. For a fee of 749 euros, it is possible to have a renewed HDMI card installed to replace the old one. Owners of these receivers can use this from next month. Recently Yamaha announced even suggest such a solution.
According to the manufacturer, the new A receivers and the updated existing models can pass 8k60 and 4k120 signals via HDMI without any problems, in addition to supporting other HDMI 2.1 functions. The HDR standard HDR10 + will also be supported, in addition to the usual support for Dolby Vision. There is support for 40Gbit / s bandwidth and Fixed Rate Link signal technology of HDMI 2.1.
Gradually, these A versions will replace the copies of the Denon AVR-X8500H and Marantz AV8805. Only a single connection will be suitable for HDMI 2.1, both with the new A receivers and with the existing models that will receive the upgrade.
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The emphasis that Sound United places on the full support of HDMI 2.1 features stems from the infamous ‘HDMI 2.1 bug’, which quite a few relatively new receivers from various manufacturers have to deal with. The German c’t Magazine found last year that there were problems with the transmission of 4k120 signals to the connected television. Sound United recognized the problems and talked about one mismatch between the HDMI chipsets of the various devices. Also Yamaha confirmed that the problem is with his receivers. These problems are particularly prevalent with connected Xbox Series X and S consoles and PCs with AMD and Nvidia video cards with HDMI 2.1.
The problem probably concerns specifically Nuvoton Technology’s integrated HDMI chips. The chipsets from this manufacturer are built into quite a few receivers that support HDMI 2.1. This problem does not arise with the PlayStation 5. The Nuvoton chips probably don’t handle the compression technique very well display stream compression. Sony does not apply this with the PS5, while Microsoft does with the image signal from the Series X and S.
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Previously, Sound United already came with a free solution for the HDMI 2.1 problems of receivers that should immediately have supported this HDMI standard without any problems. These include the AVR-X2700H, AVR-X3700H, AVR-X4700H and AVR-X6700H from Denon, and the SR5015, SR6015, SR7015 and SR8015 from Marantz. An HDMI adapter kit will be available for these models, among others. According to the manufacturer, this adapter will resolve a ‘compatibility issue’ between Denon and Marantz receivers with HDMI 2.1 and certain game consoles. This adapter must be placed between, for example, the Xbox Series X console and the receiver.
The Denon AVR-X8500HA and Marantz AV8805A are high-end 13.2 receivers, which will be available from June with prices of 3999 and 4299 euros respectively.
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