Conclusion
Pairing the Onkyo Professional PR-SC885 pre/pro with an Anthem amp like mine runs in the range of $3600, but audio performance alone is worth the price of admission. AVRs that cost upwards of $2000 more than this combo would be hard pressed to deliver the bang for your buck that the Onkyo Pro/Anthem system provides.

But there are a couple of quirks with this pre/pro that must be kept in mind. First, there was a slight audio delay when changing sources—it took a second or two for the audio to sync. This also happened frequently when changing from a stereo 2.0 channel to a Dolby Digital 5.1 channel on the TiVo Series3. A second quirk is that the HDMI signal was a bit slow to establish a handshake with my projector.

When you add these two quirks in with some others mentioned earlier, the PR-SC885 is not perfect in every way. But does something have to be perfect in order to be appreciated? No. This pre/pro receives my highest recommendation, regardless of its minor faults. In fact, I enjoyed it so much, I bought one.

Highs
Phenomenal sound quality
Excellent deinterlacing and upscaling
Internal decoding of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio
Passes below-black and above-white
Excellent value

Lows
Can't override stretching of 4:3 material
Improper color-space conversion of upconverted signals
OSD setup menu cuts off audio and video when activated
No networking functionality