<< the question is, what's the price difference on the 2 of them? if they are about the same price, i would tend to go w/ the newer h&k, but if the pioneer is significantly cheaper, get it for awhile and then wait till the thx2 and dts-es etc become more standard and mainstream. at that point, i would consider a new 6.1 or 7.1 setup.
and yes, for the price of that pioneer, i would definitely go for some seperates - rotel, parasound, adcom, nad, many good products can be had for that price or less, and sound much better. while you might not have all those features as the pioneer, sound quality and ease of the amplifier/etc in driving the speakers would be much better >>
the pioneer is 7.1, it also has pre amp outs for all the channels, it supports every new standard and i repeat 160W on 6 ohm speakers @ .09% THD per channel, that is wayyyyy over kill for a hometheater, keep in mind we are not trying to fill an auditorium with it just a room of max size 40x40 which the pioneer easily could do. hell my crappy ass sherwood that does 100W per channel can get deafing loud.
I dont think youve made a good case for sepreate components, explain in more detail please why they would sound better, cause my understanding is that there will be signifigant audio signal degradation when the analog signal pass from one compnent to another. As for sounding better, thats a very subjective thing and most of it has to do with the quality of the speakers not of the decoder/amp, especially at the quality levels we are talking about.