I'll second the vote of confidence for Yamaha. You'll find Yamaha and Denon to be the two most popular brands of receivers in these forums in the price range you are looking at. Quality wise, I think both are probably fairly close, but Yamaha seems to have enjoyed the best history in that area.
I've had problems with a Yamaha receiver, though, just goes to show nobody's perfect.

I have a different take on the auto-setup feature. My SPL meter, a setup disc, and hours of tweaking can sometimes do as good a job as YPAO does at setting the levels and delays in a few quick minutes. I'm no newbie with an SPL meter, either. This is a great feature IMO, and you should definitely ensure your next receiver has one.