To the untrained eye, an AV receiver may just look like a big black box that a bunch of TV and speaker wires run in and out of. Far more than a junction box for your go-to components like streaming ...
One receiver can handle media playback across multiple rooms.
Building a home theater setup that you're happy with is a never-ending task, with new technologies coming out all the time. But we all have to start somewhere, and for me, that's the AV receiver.