You are SOL on finding a pre at your price point unless you are OK with buying used.
Not necessarily. I purchased my factory sealed Denon 3311ci from an authorized vendor (jr.com) for
well under his price point. You just need to call them and ask for a discount.
I was referring to a PRE / AMP, not an AVR. The OP is asking for input on a pre/amp or receiver with pre outs.
I do not know of any pre with all the features and HDMI processing he is looking for under a grand - new. But I haven't looked that hard either, so I may be totally off base.
Tom- I couldn't agree with you more, which is why the big boys tend to have fewer bugs than the little guys nowadays. With HDMI, a lot more testing needs to be done that has nothing to do with audio or video processing, but ensuring that devices talk to each other to verify the user isn't stealing or using pirated media (and this costs big money). This is an unfortunate new set of rules that has nothing to do with build quality or performance where the smaller companies used to trump the larger companies.
