A home theater receiver is probably the most important part of your home theater network. It does so much of the whole movie operation. A receiver is the connection for audio and video, it is the amplifier of the audio signals and it is the decoder of the surround pertaining to you choice in sound formats.

The receiver also connects to radio stations if that is what you are doing. When choosing to buy a receiver, you are choosing to buy an electronics gear that saves you the trouble of buying separate equipment. If you don't choose the receiver you will need to obtain a decoder, a tuner and an amplifier separately. It sounds pretty good to buy the receiver instead of each of the items separately, yet it limits you to the one menu of options contained in the device where as a network of separate items would allow a larger variety of options if you are upgrading, since you can upgrade each one as you will, or if one of the items becomes faulty you only need to afford the replacement of that particular item.

Another valid argument on behalf of purchasing these components individually is that the sound quality is better with the items in the individual format that if they are all on one circuit board. It costs more money to purchase the decoder, tuner and amplifier separately.

It also takes more room. Consider if you have the extra space available to set up this many different components or if limited space might be an issue. If you do choose to buy the receiver it is essential that you make certain that the receiver has all the input slots that you require for the equipment that you are going to connect it to. For instance, the receiver should have both optical and co-axial digital audio inputs for Dolby Digital at least or DTS or both.

There should be analogue audio inputs for your CD player, your set-top box and it wouldn't hurt to have a DVD-Audio or Super Audio DC audio input either. When you are examining the available inputs on the new receiver you may purchase you need to have determined whether you will be hooking all of your home entertainment devices to it, such as, you television, you DVD player or you game consoles. If you get a receiver ready to handle all of your things you will be able to switch sources with just one controller.

For a receiver to handle all of this it needs to have the right video inputs. The only inputs that are really up to this type of usage are S-Video or component inputs. The S-Video or component inputs are also of the quality that you will want to support you gaming equipment. In European countries the input to look for is the Scart input if you can't get the other two.

Testing a receiver can be done by comparing the connection between a DVD player and the connection of a display. Hook each one to the receiver and see if the the quality of the video signal is equal, which it should be.

On your receiver you want to have the amplification power that matches the size of the room that your home theater will be in. The power rating on an amplifier should be recited it Watts per channel.

Each channel will probably need no more than 100 Watts, yet it is not wise to choose less than this. In a typical room for home theaters, a receiver that expresses its power as 100Watts per channel will be sufficient for most people.

Another important part of your receiver is the remote control that you issue command to it from. You want your remote to be comfortable to use and easy to see what you are doing. You don't want such a complex model that takes miles of scrolling to find what you want to use. Check out the remote and be certain that the functions you use the most will be handy and easy to reach.