Please help me decide: Denon AVR-2312CI or Onkyo TX-NR717

I made the exact same decision a couple days ago, and I went with the 2312. At the end of the day, I didn't trust Onkyo. My 606 has broken (HDMI cuts out intermittently), and they are apparently having problems with the current 515/616 as well (customers have been complaining since April that HDMI video cuts out).

That doesn't mean the 717 is broken or even likely to break. I've never had problems with Denon in the past though, and they have a much longer warranty. I paid for peace of mind, though it's just my personal choice.

The Denon also MultEQ XT vs 2EQ for the Onkyo. Of course the Onkyo has one more HDMI and supports MHT, but I don't forsee either of those being important for me any time soon.

I would get the Denon 2312 w/o thinking twice about it. Audyssey MultEQ XT vs 2EQ and Onkyo's poor reliability the last few years.

I'm considering the same choice, except the Denon 2113ci. The Onkyo has speaker connections for two more speakers, of which I have 9, whereas the Denon only has 7, plus the Onkyo costs $50 less. The hassle about both models is that you can only play analog sources over zone 2. Why in blazes do they impose that limitation???

You must be getting a great deal on the 717 as its MSRP is $350 more than the 2113CI and is really more on the level of the 2313CI. However, as was mentioned above, the 717 only uses the most basic version of Audyssey (2EQ) which cannot EQ a sub and has 16x fewer speaker control points than XT used on the Denon "CI" models. Choose Denon for the better audio fidelity or Onkyo for the extra speaker connections. Note however, that the 717 is still only a 7.2 AVR so the extra speaker posts are for convenience only to allow you to switch between different 7.2 configurations without having to rewire the extra 2 speakers. Also virtually every AVR on the market can only pass external analog only sources to Zone 2 (exception being last year's Denon 3312CI which can also pass PCM 2.0 over optical/digital coax to Zones 2/3 and also has the extra FH/FW speaker posts as well).

Why is that, btw, that none of these AVRs pass digital audio to the other zones? This seems to be a major roadblock for the setup I'm trying to achieve. It's probably that I'm not thinking about it correctly, so if someone can mercifully show me where the light switch is, it would save me lots of grief!

I have a 5.1 (w/sub) in room #1 (our TV room), 2 ceiling speakers in room #2 (adjacent to #1), and 2 speakers outside on the porch. We want to be able to watch TV using just the 5.1 mostly, but be able to ADD the ceiling and/or porch speakers with the same OR different program material as the 5.1. Most often, if we're not listening to TV (digital), we're listening to music from the TV (Pandora) or from an HTPC connected digitally via COAX. Since they're both digital sources, they can't be routed to the other zones.

Why am I finding this so difficult to do? (Go ahead and tell me I'm an idiot, if that's the problem).

Thanks in advance!

The reason is additional costs for what likely amounts to a very small number of folks that require the feature. Addtionally, it's generally not that difficult to simply add a RCA cable from the source as well as HDMI or optical. However, note that the AVR's on board sources (eg. internet radio, Pandora, Spotify, SiriusXM, AM/FM Tuner, etc) can be passed to Zone 2. Also note that although the feature exists on the 3312CI as noted above, it has been removed from the newer 3313CI.

Thanks for the explanation. It should help me sort this whole thing out. As for the price on the TX-NR717, I'm guessing that Onkyo is trying to sell a slow-moving product since so many people MUST HAVE the Audyssey XT instead of the 2EQ.