max I would disagree with you. I just replaced my onkyo txds838(15years of faithful service) with a yamaha 675 from best buy. price was one of the lowest I could find. granted I don't consider it real high end, but if cig was looking for something beyond what bestbuy sells, he probably wouldn't be asking for advice on here. bestbuy owns magnolia and ships to stores. I would consider them on the moderate side of high end systems...

cig.. if you are happy with the speaker sound, then just go invest $3-400 in a decent hdmi-switching receiver and keep them. ht in a box isn't going to give you anything different if speakers are still good. this leaves you with the $$ for that remote. I would highly recommend it. I replaced my old harmony with this new one and difference is night and day. if it was my money, I'd spend it on either yamaha(first choice) or onkyo. yamaha seems to have a little better rep. onkyo will have a few more features for the $$ but doesn't sound like that's important to ya and they have had a few quality issues on some of the newer units.

on an unrelated note, assuming you have a sub? that makes all the difference imo to a setup.