Hi All. I'm planning to get a 52" HDTV next month and need to get a surround sound system for the "full HD experience". :D

My budget is ~$1400 for surround sound so I would appreciate some recommendations for a receiver in the neighborhood of $600-$800. Thanks.

I'll head over to the Speaker Forum tomorrow for 7.1 recommendations.

Your best bet is probably going to be the highest end Yamaha AVR that has HDMI support you can afford.

For myself, the number of HDMI inputs would be important. I wanted at least 4, so the Yamaha offerings were out.

Denon and Yamaha make some nice receivers in that price range. I don't believe you get HDMI up conversion in that price range which makes HDMI a little less useful. HDMI up allows you to run a single HDMI cable to your display even if you have mixed component/HDMI sources.

If you are big on HDMI and need three HDMI inputs, I recall someone mentioning an affordable receiver with three HDMI inputs (Sony?)

Seems like a number of companies are releasing fall models, so I certainly encourage you to spend some time reading threads in this forum to see what the options are.

I'll have to take a look at Yamaha as it wasn't on the radar screen even though I have been satisfied with my old model. Onkyo seems to be a popular brand in the forum. What do you think of Marantz?