Pioneer Elite SC-79 Receiver with HDBaseT

At the Pioneer listening room in the High Performance Audio room at CEDIA we got to check out the SC-79 AV receiver. This is a 9.2-channel 200 watt per channel amplifier that is the flagship of Pioneer's line. It has some very interesting new features. It has 8 HDMI inputs, which is pretty impressive, but it also has two HDMI outs. That's not typically unusual, but what is unusual is what Pioneer did with the third Zone. The third Zone has HDBT (HDBaseT)—which is really, really awesome. What will make this start to be really incredible is when TVs start to have HDBT connectors. With HDBT you can go 100 meters with a single shielded CAT6 cable People are having trouble going just 3 meters with HDMI these days. And going even 10 meters with HDMI will cost you an arm and a leg. Now you can run to Home Depot and pick up some cable to go 100 meters.

Pioneer demoed this system with two zones going at the same time and there was no lag and no delays. This is a really impressive features like AirPlay, an optional Bluetooth dongle, a built-in USB DAC. It's a $3000 receiver that's already on the market. You can pick this up and put it right into your home theater system.

• Multi Zone control using HDBaseT
• THX Ultra2 Plus and AIR Studios Monitor Certified Class D
• Ultra-High performance Audio SABRE DAC
• Network ready for music streaming with AirPlay, Pandora, and vTuner Internet Radio

Unless otherwise indicated, this is a preview article for the featured product. A formal review may or may not follow in the future.