sholling, feel free to ask me any particulars about the 805. I'm using a refurbed 805 as pre/pro for over a half year.
The 876s improvements all lay in the video side, outside of Audyssey Dynamic EQ and Volume. ISF calibration controls, indepedent to souce inputs. On top of that, you can assign the same source to multiple inputs (calibrations), as then you can do things like apply EE to SD-DVD playback from your bluray player, or do the same with SD material from your STB. Uses Reon HQV I believe.
805s issues have included: poor cs, lipync, heat, what else...
My lip sync looks very, very good. I think I have BD at about 45ms delay, and HD-DVD at 60ms. Can't recall exactly. Trust me, I would notice issue with a screen that is over 11 ft wide in a light controlled HT.
You have to understand, however, is that there are lot of noobs and/or idiots that buy these midlevel receivers at $425-600. Sooooo many people who simply find sync variations between sources are blaming the receiver, since they read about such sycn issues.
For example, I almost stopped myself, didn't, but mentioned my brother's own sync issue. It then bugged the hell out of him for a bit, and now he's already forgot.
The sync issue for those who had it seemed to be helped out by FW. However, its not "official" fw, but there is plenty of stuff/instructions at avs with search function. Please note that if you have the very original FW of 1.00 or 1.01 or something like that, you can't update. mine came as 1.06 i believe, and i have no issues whatsoever, and i think the most recent is 1.08?
It does run hot. I recommend half a ft of clearance. I don't have that much space, but whatever. You can use fans as well. something I also didn't bother to install. its a very beefy ab amp. very big. note that this unit has separate power supplies for audio and video, something the 7xx and 6xx series don't.
I've insisted that the 805 was the best deal of 2008. I inadvertently talked myself into one as a pre. Oh, I could've bought an Integra 9.8, or NAD T175, or some super pricey pre/pro. This one does everything I need, which is not a whole lot, admittedly.
The only must haves for me:
Multi EQ XT
Able to bitstream advanced codecs (yam 663 cannot)
Somewhat flexible BM
that could be it.
If you don't need the brute power of the 805, I might try a Denon. For my personal desires, MEQXT being first priority, I do not recommend Yam, HK, Marantz, Pio. at the moment. That's for you to decide.
oh, the PS3 has been noted to cause issue sometimes, in strange ways. i cannot recall exactly, i dont have one, but a very, very experienced and knowledgable user originally blamed the 805 to raise black levels when passing 24p. He even had me convinced me for a little bit. It was the settings on his PS3 that was influencing all other sources connected, and one of the settings included superwhite i think.
parting shot: as for idiots, noobs, and misrepresented complaints. fwiw the 805 owner's thread is approaching PS3's owner thread in terms of # of posts and views. this is NOT to mention 505, 506, 605, 606, 705, 706, 806, 875, 876, 905, 906. I hope that puts into perspective how many of these units are out there. the 805 thread just at avs has over 17,000 posts and over 1 million views.
