For those of us who aren’t independently wealthy it often takes time to assemble an impressive home AV system.

A piece here, a piece there, another piece over here. As an aficionado, especially one with a budget, a lot of time gets spent contemplating your options before selecting just the right component.

It takes years.

And of course, the downside of spending years curating your AV system is the basic fact of life:

Everything dies.

Back in 2014 my power management/conditioner unit croaked at the age of 12.

I ended up replacing it with a much nicer one, thanks to the kind folks at SurgeX.

Just last year my beloved 10 year old Denon DVD player died.

Fortunately, it was able to be repaired by my local Denon-authorized service center. And at $179 for the servicing, it was less expensive than buying a high-end Bluray player (which I did not want to do).

Well, I wondered, it’s a new year, what’s going to die this year?

I just found out.

My video scaler, a DVDO Edge, which was only five or six years old, just gave up the ghost.

This puts me in an interesting, albeit unwelcome position.

In the intervening time since I got the DVDO Edge (which was, incidentally, the third video scaler in my system) the whole category of outboard home theater scalers have basically gone the way of the dodo.

Why?

Because video scaling of HDMI and analog component video have gone inboard on modern AV surround receivers.

Even entry level AVRs have HDMI switching and video processing, so who needs an outboard scaler?

Well, me, for one.

I’m still rocking a now-17 year old Sony ES AV receiver.

It still pounds, but it’s so old it has S-video switching (*gasp!*)

And, despite almost being old enough to vote, it’s still going strong and shows no signs of fatigue.

Come Monday I’ll investigate my repair/replace options.

But what do you think? Is it time to join the 21st Century and retire my beloved Sony ES AVR in favor of a modern AVR?