I suggest putting almost all of your budget into the speakers. The changes in technology happen a lot quicker with your receiver and a lower level of receiver can often adequately drive quality speakers but a high-end receiver will not make lower level speakers all that much better.

Yep. Technology wise for speakers- you may see an advance like once a decade of significance, and most of the time it's use of new materials.

Even then, I don't know how much it is an Advance? Up through the 90's I definitely think they were greatly refining speaker technology, and maybe someone if more familiar than myself, but it feels like since then, the gains have been pretty modest.

A lot more marketing terminology and feature names that for the most part is buzzword selling tactics.

By the way, can I say I hate that this topic came up. Only because I've been checking out avrs and new speakers this morning / afternoon on and off, and flirting with the idea of getting some new toys to upgrade or add to my hts. It's completely silly and I still have like 3 or 4 other technology home projects and 3 car upgrade projects still tucked away in their boxes that I still need to get around too.

I have bought Technics, Pioneer, Yamaha and Onkyo.

Technics bought 10 years ago and had a slight hiss at low volume. stilll going strong

Pioneer just bought and has a long sync time to switch res on HDMI inputs.

Yamaha is my favorite. Only didnt support 3D is the only reason I replaced it.

Onkyo is 5 years old. Developed an issue of having to warm up in cold weather to output sound. Seriously. In winter I had to wait 5 minutes before getting any sound out of it. The newer Onkyos are notorious from having bad HDMI capacitors that fail. So I stayed away when shopping for a new one.

Agreed.

I have a Pioneer VSX-702S I bought back in 93 or 94 and the thing still runs great.

When I was in my 20's I had a pretty sweet set up. Started by buying cheap speakers and then saved up for a nice reciever. After that saved up for the best center and surround speakers I could afford (NHT Super 0's.) Then worked on a 50 disk changer (hey, it was the 90's.)

I'd recommend buying one really nice component at a time. You need your speakers to tonally match but other than that not a big deal.

Thanks everyone for the responses.

I ended up getting a Yamaha RX-V675 (I know it was not any of the 3 that was on my "final" cut list). I like the reliability of the Yamaha's though. On top of that, I got a great deal through the father-in-law who installs commercial grade AV for a living (stadiums and what not) and he used his connections.

So now I am on to looking for new speakers and a new universal remote.

I'm selling a pair of these. Let me know if you're interested. They're amazing speakers.

http://www.klipsch.com/klf-20/details

For some reason their site won't load...

Yamaha makes great stuff. I've had a Yahama as my main living room receiver for many years.

I also have a Denon receiver in the master bedroom that I like very much.

You won't be disappointed, that's a solid receiver.

Any suggestions on remotes? What does every one currently use?

Still the Harmony One? Or has anyone moved to the Harmony Ultimate?

This ^^^ on Onkyo and if dont believe google onkyo and HDMI problems. It has put a bad rep on a company that may not recover. My Onk 705 hdmi board went capoof right after warranty.
If I was looking id go Marranz, Pioneer or Outlaw.

I would search one the smartphone or tablet apps they are pretty good . I have the Logitech one and have been very happy. But I have an app for my windows phone that i use now.

In the end, I will have the tablet and both my wide and my Samsung S4 phones. However, I want a remote that we can use as well if any guests come over (in-laws) that they can use that will turn on the receiver on the right settings and right source for the TV without me giving everyone a tutorial of it first.

I am starting to lean toward the Harmony Ultimate, but it is very pricey and I have a hard time justifying that much for a remote.

Harmonies are nice and pretty easy online setup.

Might look at urc also as they let you add macros but they are more time consuming to setup.

I looked at that... the draw back that I have read for the URC's is that you have to purchase it with the software which means that you have to go through an authorized dealer (so no price breaks).