integra dhc-9.9 or onkyo pr-sc866

The Integra is the Onkyo flagship brand - sort of their Lexus. Tech support for both comes out of the same place. Don't know it for a fact but they probably come off the same assembly line. I suspect that resale on the Integra would be easier.

No one has studied all this as closely as Kal - follow his lead and be happy - I don't think you can buy anything better for anywhere near the money.

FWIW, IMHO the 9.9 is a definite upgrade over the 9.8

Dave - while I generally defer to Kal, in this case I disagree with his assessment of the value of the new features.

The problem with the Reon processing in the 9.8 is that it is global - so what you apply to your cable box is also applied to your BluRay input. Practically speaking, in order to run your BluRay straight through, this means bypassing the Reon entirely. And it also means that if you have a separate DVD player you will let it do the upscaling locally - in my tests the Oppo outperformed the Reon by a bit so it wasn't a big compromise.

With the new set up, you can bypass or apply the Reon to each video source separately to optimize it for your set up. I think this is particularly worthwhile if you have a lot of older gear in the system where adjusting sharpness, contrast and the like would make a nice difference.

While I can understand a purist not wanting the new Audyssey features I see a plus in anything that compresses commercials to the preset listening level. I haven't heard it but I suspect that I would be willing to live with compressed explosions in exchange.

And I am hopeful that it will enable listening at lower levels without compromising the intelligibility of the dialog which is the main reason I turn the volume up.