Single AVR or components (~$2000 budget)

I'm kind of new to this myself, but have been grappling with the same issues you are. I have come to the conclusion to go the route of seperates. I came to this conclusion for a number of reasons. First, it buys you more flexibility, the amp is going to be good regardless of what happens to the video format. Therefore if things change, i.e. everything goes to the next best HDMI format, just swap out your pre. Next, your speakers might change, and need more power, or different types of power. Again, you have seperates to swap in and out of. And third, I ultimately think music sounds better when speakers have their own power source. Again, I too am new to this, but seperates are what I am doing. On another note, I actually am going to use an AVR as my pre and use it to power some of the speakers. There are tons of cheaper AVRs out there that have lots of the HDMI features, althought he Rotel pre/amp combinations sound (and look) great.

Note that this has been asked a lot. You might be able to do a search for past answers.

$2000 can barely afford to buy you separates i think.

One option is to buy a receiver with pre outs, and an amp. The reason being that pre processors are pricey when compared to a receiver with similar features.

With receivers, more money buys you features more than power in my experience. If a $2000 receiver gives you the features you want, and enough power, there's not a lot of reason to consider an amplifier.

In my case, I bought an Yamaha RX-V3900 because I liked it's features. Had I had more money, I would have bought the RX-Z7 for the better video processing.

It puts outs sufficient power for my needs. Were I to come into more money, I might consider augmenting it's power with the Emotiva XPA-3 three channel amp. With that unit, I could use the Emotiva to amplify the three front channels, and use the receiver to power the surrounds, for which I feel it would be more than sufficient.

Since you opted for Paradigm Millenia, I'll assume that music is not that important for you. The Rotel would be overkill for this application.

It is the surrounds in this set that have low sensistivity so a high current amp will give you the most realistic HT experience. A Sherwood Newcastle A965 (street price $1k or less) hooked up to any AVR that meets your decoding requirements would be excellent. That Anthem PVA7 amp listed in the Classified forum would be great in this setup.