What's the Best Receiver for Around $1100?

If you want the best bet, and highest reviewed product of the year take a look at the Denon AVR 2807. Its MSRP is $1100, but you can catch it for under $1000 any given day of the week. It was awarded best of show for audio at CES this year, also CNET gave it their audio receiver of the year award.Its a 7.1 receiver, with HDMI connectivity and passthrough (meaning if you connect an HDMI device it is compliant with HDCP and will pass the signal through - not all brands do this), has tons of inputs for any device that you may throw at it, and has a feature called Audyssey EQ which allows you to make every seat in the room a great position for surround.

You will not find a bad review on the product and if you go into any store that sells it they will 9 times out of 10 recommend it over any other product in the price range. I own one, as do many of my friends and its hard to beat.Plus if you listen to a lot of 2 channel music it has a feature called Pure Direct, which cuts off everything inside the receiver except for the amplifiers for the left and right channels and gives you amazing 2 channel sound.If you don't use the full 7.1 and only use the 5.1, you can reassign the power from the additional two channels to go to speakers elsewhere in the house, or to send more power to another set of speakers in the system through bi-amping (if your speakers have two speaker terminals on them and can handle 200 watts, then you can give them 200 watts).Also has an 8 Channel input for when the HD DVD and Blu-Ray sound formats really take off as well.

I hope this helped. Check out http://usa.denon.com and right there on the front page you will see the 2807 and its awards.

Can an SDTV work with HDTV Broadcasts?

Absolutely. SDTVs were specifically created to receive HDTV broadcasts, but what they do is reduce the resolution for 480i which is basically what a standard DVD movie produces. (Done so that anyone can afford a digital television). You have a tuner built into the TV that receives HD broadcasts, but downconverts them to "analog" so that it can be displayed on the SDTV. Another thing a lot of people aren't familiar with is that you can get HD Satellite or Cable boxes and connect them to any TV through a composite video cable (yellow). Say you had an HD in one room and an older analog set in another, or an SDTV in another room you can have an HD Satellite box in the main room, and have the same box in the other room, but just connect a coaxial or composite cable to the TV and still watch the HD channels, just not in HD resolution.