Well, no, my wife probably wouldn't let me spend more in the future (or add more boxes to the installation), especially once our baby hatches, so I feel that I need to plan a surgical strike in my window of opportunity ;). On the more-expensive price tag issue, I haven't talked $ with her yet but I'm sure that the higher I go the more resistance I'll get. She's already not all that happy about my 61" being in the living room and kinda wanted me to sell it so we could just use her 20" CRT/VHS/DVD combo unit -- so you see what I'm up against here :-/

I'm planning 5.0 or 5.1 -- seating will pretty much be against the back wall so the value of rear surrounds would seem to be especially limited -- and the value of diffuse QS4/8's to be high.

2xM60+VP150+2xQS8 from the outlet + RX-V663 = USD ~2100. At the other extreme, 2xM80+VP150+2xQS8+EP350 in real wood with a Denon 3808 would be USD ~4800. Accounts here seem to be that Axiom's vinyl is of high quality, so I'm thinking that I'll regretfully skip the substantial added cost for real wood veneer -- hopefully Axiom's "Boston Cherry" vinyl will more or less match the "Brazilian Cherry" flooring in the new room (she's already surprised me by saying that vinyl would be okay). Probably on the realistic high end I'd be looking at a 3808+outlet(2xM80,VP150,2xQS4) for USD ~3000, with the added cost of the M80's and 3808 making it difficult to justify Axiom's spendy EP350 sub.

As you can tell, I can be maddeningly indecisive when presented with more than one tradeoff axis. On one hand, the guy in me wants more power and more whizzy features on general principles, but on the other hand, my dead brother's 2.0 Bose 501 Series IV's driven by a late-80's Sony 70w stereo rcvr have seemed fine for me so far, in a room of roughly the same dimensions. Most of what I've read seems to indicate that driving a 4 ohm load like the M80's with a modest Yamaha receiver wouldn't be a good idea.

So, I need to try to predict in advance if the M60's with the high-value-at-the-price-point Yamaha RX-V663 would be enough in the new room. I have a feeling they would be, given that my existing Sony + Bose setup in a similar but carpeted room rarely goes above 3/10 volume.

I initially didn't care about the network connectivity, as it's easy enough to plug an iPod dock into any receiver. Then I read that Denon's network audio streaming only works with an MS-DOS machine, so it'd only be useful for downloading firmware updates.

I'd be happy with a receiver that didn't do video at all - my Samsung TV has 2x HDMI, 2x component, 2x S-video. 99+% of the time I'm just using the HDMI's -- one for my Oppo, the other for ITMS TV shows via laptop. Having to push two buttons on two remotes instead of one to switch sources is no big deal for me. I should think that sometime in the next year or two Oppo will come out with a BD/DVD combo unit that I'd upgrade to. The only other HDMI I can envision would potentially be an HD Dish or cable (spit) STB. Mainly what I'm after here is surround effects for DVDs and the odd TV show that has them, and the idea of an automated level/EQ setup (YPAO or Audessy) has a certain appeal.

Freedom is slavery :-/