It is on sale and I was considering picking this up to replace an old Sony crustbucket receiver.. What are some opinions on this receiver? This is about as high as I can go on a price (299+tax) for receiver. Any help would be appreciated.

IMHO I would not recommend any Sony "STR" receiver. This is their base consumer line and is woefully underpowered. If you want Sony find and ES receiver.

Otherwise look at receivers from Denon, Harmon Kardon, Onkyo and Yamaha.

I have an STR-DG910 and have had no problems at all with it.

I recently picked up the 720 from Circuit City. They have it on sale for $270. I have it connected to my PS3, A3, and dish VIP 722. It does a great job. It accepts LPCM and the sound is fantastic. Lossless audio blows away DD and DTS by a mile and that's with speakers that aren't nearly top of the line. I know most audiophiles would tell you to stay away from all Sony receivers, but for the money it's a pretty good piece of equipment. You get 3 HDMI ports and HD audio. Not a bad deal.

I agree with the recommendation to stay away from Sony's entry-level receivers (and yes, I do speak from experience).

You don't say what equipment you want to connect to your receiver, or how that equipment will be connected, but IMHO you'd do much better with this Onkyo receiver, which is $250 at OneCall.com. Even with the $31 shipping you'll be money ahead.

The Onkyo doesn't decode the latest audio formats (but then again, neither does the Sony), but it does have a 7.1 analog input.

OneCall has the Sony for $270, plus shipping.

I bought this reciever during Best Buy's black friday sale and I just bought some new Klipsch speakers. Is 16 gauge wire too thick for the spring loaded clips in the back of the reciever? If so, is there some kind of adapter that will make the wire fit?

You can get gold-plated pins to crimp onto the end of the speaker wires. They have these at Best Buy, Radioshack, probably even Wal-Mart.

I agree with Salty here you can do much better for the price. Isn't the 606 getting close to that price. I think it's like $50 over what your thinking of getting the Sony for and the 606 is a way better AVR than the Sony.
I say save your money just a little longer and hunt around for a good price for the 606. I'm not big on Onkyo but for the price you can find it now it is hard to beat.

I exchanged the 720 for the 820 because I learned that the 720 does not decode lossless audio. So I'm watching a blu-ray with TrueHD but the display is not indicating that TrueHD is being decoded. It just says LPCM on the display, just like the 720. I have the HDMI cables set up and my Panny BD30 set to transmit the lossless audio to the reciever. What am I doing wrong? The instruction manual is no help whatsoever.

Nevermind. I had to set the BD-30 to bitstream TrueHD.