Wow, $160 - I can see why you'd rather not. Everything can still be done from the receiver, of course, but it's not too convenient. If you can borrow an 825 remote for a while, by all means do. Shouldn't take 20 minutes, though.

Now, here's an interesting tidbit about the receiver "remembering" soundfield settings for each component: For about one year (97/98 models, I believe) they didn't have that feature, at least not on the ES receivers. The soundfield stayed the same no matter what component you were in. Earlier models stored what you were last in on what component, and apparantly this years' ES receivers (98/99) do as well. I'm not sure exactly what the deal is on the 825 - only way to know will be to test.