New Harman Kardon AV receiver plays back iPod HD video

Harman Kardon on Wednesday rolled out new home A/V receivers including the AVR 1600, AVR 2600 and AVR 3600. The top-end AVR 3600 may be of particular interest to iPod and iPhone users, as it includes hardware needed to play back HD video from those devices.

The $1200 AVR 3600, in stores this month, is capable of Dolby Logic 7, 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound decoding, along with Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio decoding—audio found on Blu-ray Disc. It sports a broad array of analog audio outputs, S/P-DIF inputs, along with analog and digital video inputs including four HDMI source inputs and output port.

The Bridge III is Harman Kardon’s latest iPod universal dock interface, and it comes with the AVR 3600. It charges compatible iPods, iPhones and iPod touch devices and connects them to the receiver using a single cable. You can navigate your music, video and other iPod content using high-resolution on-screen menus. Any non-HD videos are upscaled by the AVR 3600 to 1080p, according to the manufacturer.