I was looking into buying a refurbished 7400 from an authorized dealer (will have to check the Marantz warranty for refurb products) I am not sure if that could be somewhat of a blessing to get a unit that has been completely checked over and any failing parts were allready replaced. I have seen a lot of problems with this receiver, but also seen a lot of praise. What particular problems were you having? I have seen they tend to overheat and/or sound drops out during DVD playback...

As for the two receivers, I am thinking the Yamaha has a slight edge. I love that remote on the Marantz, and it also has the Circle SRS decoding. One feature I like about the Yamaha 5790 is that it has tha auto setup. However, if you want to do some of your own tweaking it has a 7 band graphic EQ built into the OSD so that you can tonally adjust each speaker individually. Correct me if that isn't such a useful feature, but it seems pretty neat to me.