Let's add some more...
1. I've never understood why people say 'I don't need to use my good stuff all the time'... Clearly, you don't need 'good stuff' ever, but when you have a decent TV and a decent set of speakers, why not use them all the time and make it easy enough to use that you want to use it all the time? Your good speakers should provide cleaner, clearer audio than your TV speakers for things, exactly like, the news, and sitcoms.
2. If you use the receiver as the heart of your system, and it's a decent model, then it will provide on screen menus, and indicate volume level on screen through the component, and perhaps HDMI outputs. It will also provide conversion from other formats to component or even HDMI. So, you can put your TV on HDMI input, connect everything, in any flavor, to the receiver, and then let the receiver convert it all to HDMI and only have the one connection to the display. No input switching on the TV, plus, full screen information about what is going on.
3. Audio and video match up within the receiver so when you switch your receiver's inputs, you don't have an image on screen that doesn't match.
4. Today's receivers basically add ZERO noise to the video image, so if you run it through the receiver, you aren't taking a quality hit, and if the receiver has good processing in it, you could even get a video quality jump out of it.
I think that people did a good job saying why you would want to go directly to the display, bypassing the receiver, but it does seem like it is only so you can avoid using the speakers and equipment that you spent a lot of money on in the first place to help you enjoy your system to its fullest potential.
Personal preference for sure!