Are you referring to me, there? First off, I did not recommend the Sony, the OP brought it up and I said it would meet his purposes. Secondly, Onkyo is one of the few mass-market brands that I have seen third-party tests actually validate their WPC ratings. Of course that is not hard to do with h/k because they rate their receivers at 50WPC or something low like that anyway. Thirdly, I have always personally disliked the h/k aesthetic and the materials choices on their receivers. They just look and feel junky to me. That cheesy ring "knob" for volume is just weird. On the other hand, I am a big JBL fan and I recognize that they're under the same parent company -- but that still has never made me like harman/kardon.
Also, you are the one who has been pumping those HA auctions in threads in this forum. I recommend Onkyo because I have had good experiences with them. I own a 703, and I got my grandparents and uncle to buy 606's and they have been great. I previously owned a Denon receiver and had it in for repairs twice. Before that was Technics (and I still own those receivers -- again, one of the few brands with 3rd party tests showing their amps at or above listed power ratings) and they have been great, but sadly that line has been discontinued by Matsushita/Panasonic.
Until your post made me look it up, I was never aware that Onkyo was a publicly traded company. (I was also unaware that Energy has been owned by Klipsch since 2006. I still remember when the original Take 5 came out, and what a stir they caused in the market.)
s44 -- thanks for the link to those refurb Onkyos! Some awesome deals in there! OP -- I would definitely recommend the refurb Onkyo TX-SR606 at $230 from accessories4less.com.
As a matter of fact, I was not just singling you out, and if I was, I would have quoted you.
I read plenty of threads on here, and on most I don't bother to reply, and you are by no means the only poster directing people to pay $250 for junky crap receivers or budget buy Polk speakers that sound like the $150 bucks a pair they pay at Fry's for "supposedly" $300 each retail towers. That's not a deal, it's total low end crap that is made to sell at 2/3s -3/4s off retail to generate sales for the manufacturers. They probably sell 1000 to 1 crap versus their top of the line components, do the math. Most people who buy looking for just cheap and not quality are just happy it even turns on and makes noise, and aren't going to come back here complaining about poor sound or bad advice unless it burns up a month out of warranty.
You won't find NEW H/K gear heavily discounted unless it's a model closeout. And even their budget $350 receiver can kick the snot out of any POS lying about 100x7 at that price range. Not only does H/K not lie about power output, they UNDERRATE it, meaning, that 50 watt x7 is actually capable of putting out 70x7 or so continuous. Which is usually more than that comparable 100x7 junker is even putting out when it's ACTUALLY rated at 50x7 (or less) CONTINUOUS power output at 8 ohms using no hocus-pocus marketing gimmicks. You get what you pay for, or don't pay more for. A $250 receiver with a puny REAL power output might be just fine to run small 2 way satellites placed in a 5 or 7 speaker array. Just don't be naive enough to pretend it will run even the cheapest budget buy Polk towers at reasonable audio levels without clipping and distortion. It won't, and it's not designed to.
The FTC and the FCC wanted to get involved with standardizing deceptive multi channel amplifier power ratings listed by MOST audio manufacturers a few years ago, and at the time various companies told them, more or less, to butt out of their power output marketing fantasies. But a similar rule put into effect about 30 years ago covers 2 channel STEREO amps ONLY. So a lack of testing and certification standardization on multi channel amps results in most makers claiming anything they want on multi channel receivers or amplifiers power output ratings. The fact is, an H/K amplifier can be expected to reliably run varying speaker loads at high powers down to 2 ohms without burning up or shutting down.
And the claimed problems with H/K not playing nice over HDMI with some HDMI devices that are NOT HDMI CERTIFIED, might be true, but you will run into every single manufacturer having various problems with HDMI devices that some makers are too cheap to have certified. Just go to any audio forum site or even Amazon and read all the HDMI complaints for any manufacturers. Why is this happening? Because the mass consumer market supports the dump and run mentality, with new models coming out yearly so there is no incentive to have low or mid range gear possibly held up in the HDMI certification process. And a simple software upgrade might not fix an incompatible hardware problem with a certified receiver and an an uncertified device, or even 2 uncertified HDMI devices. But on gear that's only doing an HDMI pass through, you also wouldn't expect any problems. The HDMI issues normally arise with handshaking, decoding and converting the HDMI signal. No company can possibly expect to be compatible with every single HDMI device out there, and isn't.
I have not had any previous problems with regard to HDMI compatibilities on my H/K gear. And I have used H/K and Infinity speakers for over 10 years with excellent reliability on new and refurbs. And I have 2 HTs full of their gear. And I have personally known people in the last 30 years who have bought Sony, Yamaha, Pioneer, Kenwood, Marantz, Sanyo, and even Onkyo components and had them fail and trashed slightly outside whatever warranty they had. And I even went to houses to debug sound system problems while discovering this. But the people who I know that bought Denon or H/K gear have no sob stories. Obviously, they fail too, but in much smaller numbers.
And while 1 person might not like the large illuminated volume knob on H/K receivers, 100 more might love it. So if you are deciding on buying gear based on your dislike of an illuminated volume knob, maybe you shouldn't be recommending audio gear here in the first place. And I think the illuminated volume knob looks just fine, but it's how it SOUNDS as well as reliability that's important, don't you think?