Harman Kardon AVR 154

Among low-priced home theater receivers, the Harman Kardon AVR 154 stands out for its great audio quality and adequate features. Experts are generally impressed with how good the AVR 154 sounds, saying it compares favorably with receivers costing more -- sometimes much more. The feature lineup does include HDMI switching, but the receiver can't process audio or video that comes in over that connection -- something some unhappy owners apparently were unaware of prior to purchase. With the exception of the lossless formats used on Blu-ray Discs, decoders for most of the popular Dolby and DTS sound formats are built-in. A multichannel analog audio input is a nice plus in this price range.

On paper, the 30-watts-per-channel seems unimpressive, but reports say that the AVR 154 has a surprising amount of wallop -- as long as room sizes and speaker efficiencies are reasonable. If you have a little bit more to spend, the Yamaha RX-V465 (Discontinued) has notably more power and a more complete lineup of extras, including built-in high-def audio decoders. Less experienced users will also appreciate the Yamaha's automatic speaker setup system and special modes that reduce tasks like setting up the receiver to view a DVD to the press of one button.

Considering that experts don't always report on home theater receivers that are this inexpensive, we found a good amount of feedback on the Harman Kardon AVR 154, including write-ups at HomeTheaterReview.com and About.com. User feedback is available at several sites, including Amazon.com.