I hate to say this but Pioneer has great discretes and their Plasmas look great as well as the RPTVs. The surround receivers are not top notch thats for sure but again codes are great. Sony does alot of toggle only BS or proprietary, doesnt play well with other brands..on purpose of course. Parasound is great product for the money however they layer the discretes so best case you got to work it to make it right, and don't ever use an emitter on the IR sensor will burn it out. Use the IR input on the back also has RS232. Krell,Denon, & Onkyo are good for codes. They are literally tons look around on the site at the "toggle only" list those are the ones you should stay away from. Such as Hughes damn them and their toggle only on/off I just leave the on/off out of the macros