Before I ask my question, to avoid any misunderstandings, I can easily believe that a Yamaha in the price range of $500-1000 would be the best value in an A/V receiver.
But my question is, what other receivers have come out this year? It is only April, so I would not expect there to be vast numbers of receivers that have only come out this year that could compete for the honor of being the best value this year.
I don't like this about it:
There are no pre-ins for adding legacy gear.
That also means it is not going to be suitable for any future formats that are externally converted to multichannel analog. I guess they are counting on any new thing to be converted to multichannel PCM sent via HDMI, or planning on just selling another receiver in the future.