What about the sound?
Dr. Sidney Harman passed recently - happily and productive until his 90's. The very first REAL piece of Hi-Fi I ever heard was a mid-fi Sansui Integrated Amplifier from a Philips 212 turntable to a pair of JBL L-100's. My point here is not ONLY that I'm as old as, well, cassette decks for a grand. I noticed you made mention the H/K was " a dated remake " of an older model, but also that it was third heaviest of all of the entries. That's one of the reasons I have owned only one 2 channel system that did not have a Harman amplifier - stereo or multi channel - out of at least a dozen in my life. I worked in the industry at both sales and management levels before a back injury sidelined me a while back, and that offered a LOT of objective critical listening to different amps. Harman Kardon amps spound better because of 1) high current amplifiers 2) with low to almost no negative feedback applied, and 3) ultrawideband frequency response - out to 100k plus. Now none of these ideas would be considered "new" as you seem in search of in the survey, however they are a more expensive way to build an amp - sans a lotta chip sets! So you go ahead with all of the bells and whistles, I need my A/V receiver for listening to SACD's and Blu Ray films as well as, well, you mentioned what you felt they left off. And the street price is a bit less than half off, but not by much - as there IS a model AVR3650 shipping soon.
Whatever you end up with, I pray that it brings you more joy than pain. Do yourself a favor, listen to a H/K, and I promise you won't care that it doesn't say "THX" on it anywhere! God bless you . . .