Help with unnecessary feature dudplication with blu ray and AV receiver purchases

Yes, or at least the means to pass the audio they create through to the speakers.

But, this is the wrong question.

Since the AVR has to have the features, the more important question is "Does the Blu Ray player have to have the features for them to be available to you." and the answer is no.

That is a good plan,

Yes, you can go to the manufacturer's web site(s), obtain the detailed specifications which sometimes involves analyzing the users manual, and compare

Of course a lot of this depends on what features and functionality you want. If you want certain kinds of handling of SACD and DVD-A discs, then you have a lot of research and fairly expensive hardware ahead of you, together with some awkward operations that you have to may have to do frequently.

If you just want to enjoy the movies on the next Blu Ray that you buy, download, or rent; it is highly probable that a fairly simple inexpensive Blu Ray player and AVR will do the job.

It seems like a stripped down product, such as a television that is really just a giant monitor without a tuner or crappy speakers should be cheaper than one with added bells and whistles. However, this is often not the case, as the volume of product manufactured that way is far lower than that of product with long feature lists. So I guess most of us wind up with, for instance, two or three upscalers (bd player, avr, tv) and then have to figure out which one is best. Oddly enough you'll often have to pay a premium for stripped down product.

There is no compatibility issues in the way you are explaining it. When Blu-ray came out there were some but not anymore. All modern AVRs and players have the right AV features to play nice with each other.

Internet access/network playback is another matter. While there is no compatibility problems with respect to your AVR, there are differences in how well that is implemented in the players vs TVs. It is model and brand specific. And no, I have not seen a comprehensive list comparing them. Pick your favorite feature/app and make sure it runs well in the device you are buying. In general, Blu-ray players seem to have more capable implementations than TVs (the silicon in Blu-ray player has traditionally been more capable than the cheaper version used in TVs).

I don't think that you need to worry so much about AVR and BC player compatibility as you need to worry about those internet sites. IME once the BD player logs into the internet site (but only if it can do so), the compatibility with the AVR is a done deal. However AVRs vary strongly in terms of which internet sites they support. The more total solution for accessing the internet is a PC.

+1. I'd bet that the parts cost of putting in all the connections and features I think are superfluous in my HT equipment, for the whole manufacturing run of any given avr or bd player, is literally less than the incremental cost of obtaining UL and other countries' similar approvals for each separately configured device would be. So you start with machines that have the same intrinsic costs, then you start stripping away the economies of scale by manufacturing maye a fifth to a tenth of the number you'd make of the one size fits all device. You end up paying more to get rid of the functionality you don't need.