Brent, I have asked this question several times in these forums but am not sure i ever really got a cogent answer. The idea that there would be signal loss when the hdmi stream passes through the avr would make sense if the avr were merely repeating the signal it received upstream from the source.

However, we know that is not the case, as the avr needs to decrypt the stream and then encrypt it with a different key. Since the avr is therefore sending what is essentially an entirely new stream of data, how is it that the signal would not leave the avr with the strength of a new signal (ie without any loss?)