If you take a look at Mitch4t's "System" link, you'll see what kind of system and space he has. Also, Mitch started this thread in June. In the time between the first posts and this revival 3 months later, he bought the $2K Marantz BD8002 Blu-ray player with built-in decoder for all the lossless formats. I suspect you'd have to get a very expensive pre/pro--when it comes along--to equal the decoding quality built into this Marantz.
As to how you can configure the analog outputs, this page has a link to download a pdf of the manual, which should tell you all about it. Page 13 mentions that there is an analog output configuration menu where you can set the rear surrounds to "None."
My $169 Oppo DV-980H allows me to configure the 7.1 ch analog outputs for 2, 3, 4, 5, or 7 channels, so I'd be very surprised if the $2K Marantz flagship wouldn't at least equal it in configurability.
As to how you can configure the analog outputs, this page has a link to download a pdf of the manual, which should tell you all about it. Page 13 mentions that there is an analog output configuration menu where you can set the rear surrounds to "None."
My $169 Oppo DV-980H allows me to configure the 7.1 ch analog outputs for 2, 3, 4, 5, or 7 channels, so I'd be very surprised if the $2K Marantz flagship wouldn't at least equal it in configurability.