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The announcement was made by Yamaha US on its website, and covers the RX-V4A, RX-V6A, RX-A2A, TSR-400 and TSR-700 models launched last year.

While rival AVR makers Denon and Marantz are tackling the HDMI 2.1 issue – which affects passthrough of 4K/120Hz video from the Xbox Series X console – via an external HDMI adapter to be offered free-of-charge, Yamaha's solution involves an update to the HDMI board itself.

Says Yamaha: 'From the time we launched several AV receivers in 2020, we stated that we would support emerging HDMI 2.1 capabilities – including pass-through of 4K/120Hz – in these models via future updates. A future hardware update is required [...] for customers who plan to connect Xbox Series X or NVIDIA RTX30 at 4K/120Hz to these select AV receivers.'

The update program will begin in Autumn this year, and will be free to customers with one of the affected models for 24 months. Owners are advised to register their AVR in order to be notified of the 'next steps.

The announcement follows the recent launch of Yamaha's new Aventage series AV receivers, the RX-A4A, RX-A6A and RX-A8A. These models will receive a firmware update later this year to unlock HDMI 2.1 features, and will not require a physical board upgrade.

*UPDATE*: Yamaha UK has confirmed that the rollout program will be worldwide.