Unfortunately the term Home Theater has come to mean multi-channel. This is unfortunate because there is nothing about watching movies that requires lots of channels. The goals of high end audio and cinema should be the same: high fidelity. If multiple channels were so crucial to fidelity they would be used equally in both formats. Clearly they are not. Audiophiles do not listen to stereo because some marketing campaign says they must. They do so because it sounds better. HT for some reason is mesmerized into believing that somehow HT requires multi-channel.
The tragedy of this is there is no such thing as high fidelity multi-channel. This is why audiophiles abandoned it. Watching moves on a big screen reduces a lot of people to the state they are unable to notice just how awful those HT surround systems sound.
So it is vexing indeed to see someone asking for the best sound quality in HT, knowing full well they will reject the one true answer: Stereo. The best processor is no processor. Ditch that crap, buy a preamp or integrated amp. Ditch all the surrounds, and the superfluous center. Once you get past not having the gimmick it quickly becomes apparent the sound quality is about a million times better.
The key to integrating in other words is not about the stereo, but about the screen.