Well, unless, like me, you have several old AVRs around so you only need an unpowered zone. But I get your point. Apples to Apples is hard to find in this debate. The gap, I think, is more that a company like Outlaw or Emotiva can't afford really good scalers so the video (and networking and XM, etc) all fail to meet the standards of Denon or Onkyo or HK. You need economies of scale and those smaller companies will not likely not be able to supply some of the goodies the big boys do.

Panny 3000 PJ, 118" Carada, Denon 3300, PS3, Axiom QS8, PSB 5T, B&W sub, levitating speaker wire