Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I bought this at Best Buy, not Amazon, but wanted to review it here anyway. Pros: Sounds great! The simulated "presence" speakers add more sound to the room. I like how you can raise the volume level of just dialog instead of having the raise the volume of the center speaker itself. It runs nice and cool, even in my cabinet behind glass doors. It has plenty of HDMI ports, and I like how it also has optical and coax audio inputs, DLNA, airplay, and the iPhone app to adjust volume and some other settings. Cons: I have all my devices passing through the receiver via HDMI for picture and sound. A couple times a month when watching from my Cable DVR or my WD Live streaming device, the picture will go blank for 2-3 seconds, but I won't lose audio. I swapped out the receiver once with another new one, but this one does it too. I tried all new high quality HDMI cables, tried differed HDMI ports on the TV and Receiver, and that didn't help either. It's not the TV or Cable DVR, used those without the receiver for a few years with no issues. Make sure to set your front speakers to "small" even if they are large. The automated setup set mine to large, but when you do, the subwoofer doesn't work well. Online tech support is worthless. For the screen blackouts, they said I should swap out the receiver again (but I can't because I'm past my 30 day return policy) plus I already did that and it didn't help. Tech support didn't suggest anything else, and didn't offer anything to try, or even ask anything about the devices I was using. They just said they have not received any other reports of this issue even though I shared a link with them that showed I wasn't the only one with the issue. I also have an issue with playlists for music using DLNA and their tech support just said it works fine for them, so must something wrong with my PC setup, even though I told them all of my other DLNA devices work perfectly. Overall, even though I get the occasional black screen (picture loss) when watching, the sound quality is great, and I like the other features as well. I just hope they can fix the issue via a firmware update in the future. Update: 9/25/14 The intermittent issue of losing picture for 3 seconds has gotten worse. It has gone from only happening a couple times a month to 6 times in a 7 hours watching spree. I called Yamaha, and they still say they haven't heard of this issue from anyone else, and that I need to take it into service. I called the local Yamaha service center that Yamaha suggested. The service center said that since the issue is intermittent, the only way they could diagnose it is if it had the issue while they were watching it and running a diag right at that time, and since it may take up to 2 weeks to have the issue, they don't feel they could successfully diagnose the issue. So, I am lowering my review from 4 stars to 2. I may just stop using the HDMI throughput on my devices, which defeats one of the reasons I got a new receiver, plus I will lose the onscreen menus and volume. I also plan to work with Best Buy to see if my extended warranty I purchased with it would let me switch it to a different brand since Yamaha can't fix it. It's a shame, the sound quality is excellent, but there is definitely an issue with their HDMI pass-through with this model, at least with some users' setups. Update: 11/13/14 Yamaha commented on this review and opened a new case for me. This time, they offered to replace the unit with a new one. I did have to go without it for about 10 days, but they did send me a new one that I am using now. I've used it for about a week so far with no picture drop-out, but as I mention above, sometimes it will go a month without issue, so really too soon to tell for sure. Kudos to Yamaha for reaching out, hopefully this unit won't have the issue. If I can go 2 months with no issues, I'll adjust my rating. Update 12/8/14 Well, the new receiver (the 3rd new RX-V677 unit I have tried) has started doing the same thing where it will intermittently lose picture for 2-3 seconds, but not lose audio. My wife saw it happen once last week, and we both saw it happen yesterday. Both times were when watching the Cox Motorola DVR. Both times we rewound the video and verified it wasn't the show causing it. So, either some hardware (TVs, Cable boxes, etc.) isn't compatible with this Yamaha receiver, or there is an issue with several of these units. (But what are the odds I got 3 bad ones?) Either way, I can't recommend this receiver if you want to use HDMI pass-through. Its a shame, because it sounds great. I will be bypassing the HDMI pass-through and using optical and digital coax on my devices like I used to with my old receiver, as I don't have any issues with the Yamaha receiver with that setup, but I hate losing the on-screen menus. Update 3/12/15 I hooked up the HDMI splitter that "abuyer" recommended here in the comments. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004F9LVXC/ref=cm_cd_asin_lnk I placed it between the receiver and the TV. I don't use the CEC features, so I don't mind if placing the splitter here prevents that from working. I don't notice any picture loss, and so far, this is the longest this receiver has gone without losing the picture, and it's been about 2 months now I think. I don't have a 3D TV, so not sure if that would be affected, but the splitter says it can do 3D. Anyway, I don't understand why this corrects the issue, and pretty silly it is needed, but hopefully Yamaha learns from this and fixes this in future receivers.