Guys, thanks for all the comments and advice thus far. It seems apparent that Denon receivers are a decent product, but quite complex. The weak remote issue has never bothered me as that can be corrected by a decent universal one--and trust me, no remote is as poor as the one for my Yamaha RX-V595a. I haven't yet been completely won over by any brand as of yet, I'll wait for the reviews to start coming out before that happens. However the Denon is in the lead. It will definitely be interesting to see how well Denon's Audyssey MultEQ XT audio set-up works with this new generation of receiver, as well as the new GUI which reportedly is modelled after Yamaha's current one.
