I loved my old AV receiver, a Marantz SR-4002 that was perhaps five or six years old. It sounded absolutely wonderful, had a bunch of power in reserve and was among the first generation of units to have HDMI inputs, so I didn’t have to connect five wires every time I hooked up a DVR or a cable box. But it also couldn’t decode or downscale Dolby Digital 2.0, which is the standard on such services as Netflix and Vudu, and playing streaming audio or video — or anything off of my network drive — required the intervention of my Roku 3 box.

So I wanted a receiver that could handle a network and decode the latest iterations of Dolby Surround. I also wanted one that was futureproofed for the coming standard of big-screen video — Ultra HD/2K resolution — so that when I upgraded the TV in a few years, I wouldn’t have to plunk down cash for a receiver as well. And I wanted a receiver with more HDMI inputs and a much better setup process. Finally, I wanted a receiver with upgradable firmware so I wouldn’t have a Marantz Problem again in a year or two.

I turned to the same shop where I bought the last receiver — accessories4less.com, which specializes in factory refurbs from major manufacturers. This allowed me to buy a Denon AVR-E400 — which runs about $350 retail and was closer to $500 less than a year ago — for $250, with a one-year warranty. It has everything I wanted, has an amazingly accurate and useful auto-configuration feature and can be controlled by an Android tablet/phone app (it also works with Apple AirPlay but I’m not an Apple guy).

It took all of an hour for me to connect my TV, computer, streaming box, DVR, network, Blu-Ray, three pairs of speakers and a subwoofer to this receiver, and the setup app that’s built into the computer used Audyssey to set appropriate speaker levels. Everything worked great on the first try except for one satellite speaker, which was quiet because I had shoved the speaker wire too far into the receiver’s spring-loaded terminals and they were only touching insulation. It took 10 seconds to fix.

The Marantz was the best receiver I ever owned and I’m not sure this Denon quite gets there in terms of audio quality, but it has far more features and certainly sounds very good. I’ve got no complaints and I don’t think I’ll have to worry about getting another receiver for many years.