Welcome to AVS Forum “Recommends”—the holiday shopping season is almost upon us, so we turned to our friends over at the AVS Forum to help out our readers. We’re surveying them each week over the next 10 weeks for suggestions in some major electronics categories, so if you’re planning on doing some first-time buying or upgrading, you’ve got a sense of what this group of A/V enthusiasts and DIY theater builders put their trust in.

Since we know not everyone has an unlimited budget, especially this year, we’ve tried to put a cap on your spending. First up: A/V receivers for under $1,000. We’ll be including MSRPs in the slideshow captions (View Slideshow here), but of course some of you will find much better pricing out there (and if you do, please let our readers know in the comments below).

We’re narrowing down the AVS members’ choices—their responses were open-ended—to the eight most common receivers they suggested (we’ll skip calling them vote-getters officially because they weren’t voting on one receiver over any other).

It was pretty clear that Onkyo is considered the reliable, affordable, and quality receiver of choice. The company’s models gathered four of the top six spots, with those four receivers combined recommended by nearly 40-percent of those surveyed. Tops among the Onkyo models was the TX-SR606, followed closely by the TX-SR805.

More than 30 individual models were noted by AVS Forum members, so you can be assured that there are plenty of A/V receivers for you to check out while you’re shopping. If you have some other suggestions—if you’re an AVSer and wants to reiterate your recommendation—please add in the comments below, and why you love the receiver. Check out our slideshow for some features (how many HDMI inputs do you need? looking for 1080p upscaling?) plus some Forum members’ comments about why each receiver rocks.

Arlen Schweiger - Editor of Electronic House Magazine

Arlen writes about home technology installations and product news and reviews for electronichouse.com and Electronic House magazine.