I am going to give the Sony
STR-ZA810ES a shot. While a bit more, it is only within $100 of what I was looking to do to fix the HDMI issues and even remove the gigabit accelerator out of the job. I will give the yamaha a second look too if the sony doesn't work well or if another simple setup comes up.
I have used the NR series before, but I feel and had it confirmed the HDMI outputs are not good for longer runs.