Make sure you’re not leaving performance on the table.
If you have a lot of devices to plug into your TV at once, a common solution to that is picking up a receiver. While audio is the big thing for a receiver, it’s also a relatively easy way to keep everything plugged in at once without having to switch HDMI cables back and forth all the time. I love my Denon 760h for this reason, as my Xbox Series X, Switch 2, 4K Blu-ray player, and Apple TV 4K are all plugged in at the same time, and none of them leave performance on the table by doing so.
However, the 760h is a relatively new receiver that comes with 4K support. There are many other receivers that either don’t support HDMI at all or ones that don’t have any 4K options. I picked up a receiver from Goodwill that falls into that second category, and that means plugging my PS5 into it isn’t the best idea. It’ll work, but it means I won’t have 4K resolution, and I hope that’s not a trap other people are falling into without realizing it. It’s part of the blessing and the curse that is HDMI cable backward compatibility.
Make sure your TV’s ports aren’t better than your receiver’s
An easy mistake to make
If you’re like me and coming from a newer receiver to an older one, it’s a bit of whiplash as I’m used to just plugging everything I have into the receiver and calling it a day.
