'Quack & 'Mack, thanks for that info.
The 2809 looks interesting. Thanks for bringing that to my attention. After being more-or-less out of the AVR market for the past 7 years, I'm trying to reacquaint myself with all the relevant model numbers.
I will definitely take a look at it as I'm comparing AVR's. My only hesitation with it is that it's lacking a few features that the 876 has; THX Ultra certification (probably meaningless, but it has the sticker
), a GUI setup (sort of confused as to whether or not it has one), more power, and that Reon processor (I want a 'good' upscaler), and by just about every review I've read, the Reon is placed above the Faroujda in terms of absolute upscaling performance. But still, looks like a rather potent receiver.
Happy to hear from a real user on the 876's HDMI handshake speeds. One or two seconds is certainly tolerable. 8+ is a bit long. And yes, I've read through all of the AVS stuff about firmware updates. I'm an IT guy and so I'm not afraid of doing such things, and I have a couple of old PC's with serial ports so that's not a problem. So I'm reasonably confident that F/W updates will not be an issue.
Thanks again guys.