Buena Park, Calif. –
Yamaha’s new
-series
label will appear on one Blu-ray player in the coming months, joining the first
Aventage series of A/V receivers (AVRs)
at suggested retails from $649
to $1,899.
Aventage
(Ah-Ven-Taj), which stands for AV ENTertainment New AGE, designates a series of
products that, the company contends, “embody obsessive attention” and “a
multitude of engineering refinements” designed to “achieve peak performance at
affordable price points.”
The AVRs,
said product training manager Phil Shea, were “two years in the making,” so they
don’t represent the “little evolutionary steps” that suppliers often make to
AVRs from year to year. Engineers evaluated every component and design
parameter in the AVRs to deliver the best possible sound and video quality, he
said. A fifth foot in the middle of the receivers’ underside generated a
“significant improvement” in sound quality, he noted. Hundreds of other
enhancements, ranging from the choice of 12-amp glass fuses to power supplies,
were all designed to improve sonic performance, he continued.
Yamaha will
bring that attention to detail to an Aventage Blu-ray player due in October.
Details were unavailable, but the Blu-ray player’s cosmetics will match the
Aventage AVRs and, like the AVRs, feature a metal front face.
Aventage
AVRs replace the RX-V series name at price points of $649 and up. The RX-V name
will continue to be applied to lower-priced AVRs. Current RX-V models
are priced at a suggested $249
to $599.
The
Aventage series, which features a 50-percent-longer warranty, will be
franchised separately from the RX-V series, as were lower- and higher-priced
RX-V models in the past, Shea said. Like the higher-priced RX-V models of last
year, the Aventage AVRs will be sold through online and brick-and-mortar
retailers with the capability to “explain and support” the products, Shea said.
In the Aventage series, Yamaha is
incorporating a new virtual presence technology that delivers virtual
front-height channels without the addition of separate front-height speakers.
The technology, not available last year from the company, also appears in the
top-end RX-V receiver at $599.
Also in the
Aventage series, Yamaha is bringing DLNA 1.5 certification to the $1,099 price
point from $1,399, bringing dual HDMI outputs down to $799 from $1,399, and
bringing Internet radio down to $1,099 from $1,399. Those models access the
Sirius and Rhapsody music services as well as Internet radio stations.
The Aventage models, like the top-end RX-V
model at $599, feature an onscreen GUI that overlays 1080p and 3D video. All
Aventage models also feature 3D-compatible HDMI 1.4a inputs and outputs with
HDMI’s audio return channel, as do this year’s RX-V models.
HD Radio
starts at a suggested $799 in this year’s Yamaha lineup, and HDMI passthrough
in standby mode starts at $649 in this year’s AVR lineup.
The top two
Aventage models are the industry’s first AVRs to incorporate the HQV Vida
video-processing chipset to ensure peak video performance.
Features
common to all Aventage models include 7.2-channel output, decoding of all
Blu-ray surround formats, compatibility with Yamaha’s wired and wireless iPod
docks, Bluetooth option, YPAO room optimizer, analog-to-HDMI 1080p video up-scaling,
Deep Color (30/36 bit) technology, x.v.Color, 24Hz refresh rates and auto
lip-sync compensation.
