Well, I brought home both a Denon 4310CI and a Pioneer Elite SC-27 this weekend. The Denon was nice, but many of the direct access features of my Denon 3805 were missing. I could no longer adjust speaker levels with the push of one button on the remote. The 4310 seems to require that you go the through the GUI to do this. By the way, the Denon has the nicest GUI I have seen and it can overlay over video for adjustments on the fly. I also could not figure how to cycle through various Surround modes as I could with my 3805 as in PLII Cinema & PLII Music. Once again it had to be done through the GUI. I did not much care for the remote that came with the 4310. Audessy set up was very nice and worked flawlessly. The big problem with the 4310 that I had was HDMI issues. When the GUI was on the HDMI connection would go out and would reacquire about every 15 to 30 seconds, and during a movie it would go out randomly. Due to this reason it had to go back to the store. I brought home a Pioneer SC-27 to try. This thing is a monster. Sound wise it was not that much different than the Denon. Both sound very nice. The good news is that there are no HDMI issues with this unit and many of the features that I liked such as direct access to surround modes, speaker level adjustments and such were available with the touch of a button on the remote. The remote is not the greatest, but serves its purpose, much better than the EL remote from Denon. The bad news, the GUI on the Pioneer is not nearly as refined as the Denon. Many features and adjustments are not available through the GUI. The GUI seems to be there for initial Setup and a few functions. It cannot overlay over video, so it cuts off a movie if you try to use it. Also many of the adjustments cannot be seen on the tv screen such as volume, speaker levels when adjusting from the remote or audio parameters, they only show up on the Receiver display. The MCACC setup works almost as well as Audessy. Another thing that I miss from the Denon is the ability to have A & B Surrounds, but because everything works, I will keep the SC-27 for now. I have 30 days.