I bought this receiver the other day. What a remarkable difference from my old Pioneer which I was never proud of (came in a package setup). I can finally hear my surrounds, and it's great! Voices from the television aren't screamingly loud as with the old Pioneer and the Onkyo, while projecting the voices "normally," can blast the room with explosions. I'm very pleased so far, and I'm using old bookshelf Pioneer speakers and a passive subwoofer...for now.
As I said, I bought this the other day and have been having trouble with the firmware update...what a headache. One forum led me here yesterday, and oddly enough, it was from this thread that I decided not to upgrade. This morning another read through the thread gave me the guts to try again. I say this because I've been concerned that I'd mess up the system. So, for the firmware upgrade, which I was able to successfully install, I did the following: First I emptied a thumbdrive and formatted it to FAT32 (full format, not the quick format). On my desktop, I extracted the zip file containing the upgrade. I put the unzipped contents (do not include the zip file) consisting of 1 folder (containing 4 files) and 3 files, for a total of 7 files (leave the folder with the 4 files intact). When you open your thumbdrive, the root should show 1 folder and 3 files (just want to make it clear, I had major headaches with this). Eject your thumbdrive from the computer and plug it into the front of the receiver, and turn the receiver on (does not need internet connection, mine was not plugged into ethernet or wireless). On the remote, press usb button (Remote Mode/Input Selector section) until you see USB(F) on the receiver. The receiver will begin initializing/reading the drive. Once the initial initialization is complete, on the remote, select receiver button followed by home. Go over to Firmware Update and press enter. Voila, it should now give you the option of updating. The process takes about an hour, and when you see "Completed!" on the receiver, turn it off and back on, and you're done.
I also ordered the tp-link wireless lan usb mentioned in this thread from newegg, as well as some polk monitors and a powered sub.
It's performance, and I'm not a pro, rekindled my interest in home theater and ushered in the desire for new speakers.
So far, so good. I hope I've been able to help someone, and thanks for all your prior posts.
-gj89