My 10-year old Onkyo receiver is dying on me, so my desire to upgrade to an Outlaw combo may be coming faster than I anticipated. I'm wrestling between a 976/5000 and 975/5000 combo. It's mainly used for Home Theater, though bluetooth for music is interesting, and it's for a 5.1 setup in a small family room, so I don't anticipate being interested in immersive or 7.1 any time soon.

I do have some 4k video components, so if I went with the 975, my base setup I presume would be optical from the TV to the processor, while the 976 would be HDMI from source to processor then TV. I'm not entirely clear if optical is sacrificing anything vs running HDMI directly into the processor.

Can anyone comment on the advantages of the 976 for my particular setup? Anything I should think about with either option?

Thanks.