A recent reviewer said, “To provide some background I’ve been an audiophile since my late teens and sold high end audio in the 70’s. I bought this receiver along with a pair of PSB 5’s, C4, and Infinity PS38 with the Samsung BD-F7600 Blue-Ray. This was for a vacation home and my original intent was to have decent 2-channel stereo for CD’s but thought it would be nice to enhance the dialogue on our Panasonic plasma panel for movies and HD broadcast. The Crutchfield rep steered me toward this 3.1 system but in the end I had problems getting the receiver to work with 2 brand new Comcast HD boxes with one being a DVR as neither box worked reliably with the Marantz using HDMI. After a week of technical support calls, changing cables, boxes, etc. I said enough. Part of my discontent also centered with the Marantz Pure-Direct 2-channel performance as CD’s from the Samsung Blue-Ray through the Marantz sounded processed and muddy. I don’t know if this was the Samsung or the DAC in the Marantz but definitely not audiophile quality. There were also annoying random static sounding clicks or pops in quiet passages that were not evident when the Samsung was connected to the Panasonic panel via HDMI and played through the internal speakers. After using Audissey to set levels my wife and I watched a few movies and several HD content shows and frankly, found the dialogue easier to understand using the Panasonic speakers so it went back. I’ll blame Comcast for the connectivity issues – a dysfunctional company.”