Home theater receivers are the brains and muscle of your home
theater system. They provide processing, switching and
amplification. Just about every other component in your home
theater system will be somehow connected to your receiver.
Sometimes the receiver is just called an amplifier because it
provides several channels of amplification to the speakers, but
amplifier is just one job performed by the receiver. Receivers
replace the following components: surround sound formats and
will convert digital audio signals to analogue. There are many
surround formats and it's necessary to know which formats your
receiver can decode. Most receivers today can decode the popular
important formats like Dolby Digital and DTS and are backward-
compatible to older surround formats like Dolby Pro Logic.
Decoding surround formats requires that you use your DVD
player's digital output. A single cable (toslink or digital
coax) will run from the DVD player to the receiver's digital
input, carrying a stream of 1s and 0s for your