The energy consumption of an Onkyo TX-SR876 receiver was measured using a Kill-A-Watt power meter. The 876 is one of the higher-end Onkyo THX certified AVR's that were reviewed here. It has an HQV Reon-VX video processor, 3 TI DSP chips, and 7 channels of 140W amplification. Here is a list of the watts consumed in the different standby and idle modes:
standby: 0W (default)
standby: 86W (HMDI Power Control on)
idle: 120W (4 ohm)
idle: 149W (6 ohm)
The Onkyo 876 is Energy Star approved and it consumes less than 1W in its standby (off) state. When the HDMI-CEC Power Control mode is enabled the standby energy usage jumps to 86W which is ridiculous in my opinion. Unfortunately the HDMI Power Control option needs to be enabled for the HDMI TV Control to be active, so you can't have any basic HDMI-CEC controls without wasting a lot of juice all the time. It is best to save the planet, and your wallet, and leave the Onkyo's HDMI control options disabled.
The 876 has an amplifier speaker mode for selecting the either 4 ohm or 6 ohm operation. The 4 ohm option dramatically reduces the amplifier power which was required for UL certification. The difference in idle power consumption is almost 30 watts which makes it a good choice if you happen to have external amplifiers and are using the 876 as a pre-amp/processor.
The TX-SR876 was in an open air rack with good ventilation on all sides and it did not get uncomfortably hot. So the rumors of the Onkyo 876 and 906 having a heat problem are false but I'll have to wait for the summer hot months to know for sure. The 876 did get a bit warm but it was definitely cooler than you would expect from a device consuming 120W at idle.
Firmware version 015 was made available January 29th 2009 for the 
model also has firmware 015 available with the same improvements listed. The S350 and S550 firmware download files both have files sizes of 51,822,592 bytes but they have different md5sum checksums so they are not the same. I will update this section when I compare the contents of both firmwares and determine what is different.
The Blu-ray disc of Pixar's Wall-E experiences several brief DTS audio dropout glitches when played on a Lexicon DC-1 THX AC3 DTS preamp with the v2.01 firmware. The DTS audio plays flawlessly until about 18 minutes into the movie when the first brief audio dropout occurs. The glitch is very annoying and it happens about 20 times during the movie. The dropouts are repeatable and they always happen at the same locations. When it happens the Lexicon loses lock on the 5.1 DTS signal, switches to 2ch 48K PCM, and then reacquires the 5.1 DTS signal all in a fraction of a second.
Pioneer has announced that it will build 3000 more LaserDisc players before it halts production. Currently 3 models of LaserDisc player are still being built and they are all produced by Pioneer. So this signals the end of an era. Production of LaserDiscs stopped in 2001 and Pioneer had continued building players for people who had large collections of discs.
that runs until January 16th 2009. The selection is quite large this time. Amazon's slow but free shipping is also available which makes this deal even better.