Sometimes I’m really, REALLY, puzzled by home theater equipment producers.  Remember how I was talking about the Denon yesterday, and how a couple small tweaks produced a bargain model that was almost identical to the original? Well, that’s about what’s happened with today’s model, the Yamaha RX V665.

The Yamaha RX V665 is a seven channel surround sound receiver with HDMI 1.3 with deep color, xv Colorspace, 1080p compatible, support for HD Audio formats, analog video to HDMI up-conversion and also de-interlacing from 480i to 480p, and independent 2 Zone, 2 Source operation.

The weird part about this whole thing is that, from what I’ve been able to tell, the Yamaha RX V665 is almost exactly the same thing as the Yamaha RX V1065, only missing a USB port, a few buttons and dials, and about four hundred bucks off the price tag.

Seriously, this sucker weighs in at just under five hundred bucks.  It’s a nice piece, and the few things missing from the more substantial version likely won’t be that much missed at all.