Sony STR-AZ1000ES 7.2 CH 8K A/V Receiver
At Audio Advice, we have always liked the entry-level Sony ES receiver model as it packs in a lot for the money and sounds very good. The new STR-AZ1000ES follows in those same footsteps. It has 7 powered channels with several possible configs for channels 6 and 7. They can be your surround backs, your height channels, a powered zone 3, or can be used to biamp the fronts. That is pretty darn flexible! You also have preamp outs for zone 2 and 3 as well.
For HDMI there are 2 connectors that support 8k and 4k/120 and 4 others for 4K. You get two HDMI outs with the main having eARC and the other for zone 2. Other inputs are a single Coax and Toslink digital with three analog audio inputs. Two of these have composite video you can link with them, but the unit does not upconvert this to HDMI so you would need to use the video out to go to a composite video input on your TV for old VCRs and such.
The AZ1000 will be a great receiver for a lot of systems and we see this one being used the most to take advantage of the ability all of them have to add the wireless Sony surround speakers. We should point out it does not have any expansion capability as there are no preamp outputs.
