I was dead set on buying a Denon 3313Ci BUT found this nasty hidden gem that apparently it won't play HDMI audio out to zone 2 and 3? For an amp designed for all of it's inputs to be HDMI that makes it pretty worthless as a multizone don't you think? I've been researching like crazy and trying to find ways around this but haven't seen definitive answers. My planned setup is this:

Reciever will directly play zone 1, a 5.1 surround room
Zone two will pre-amp via RCA to a 2 channel receiver to play my outdoor speakers
Zone three will pre-amp via RCA to a 4 channel receiver to play in 4 rooms of the house.

Zone 2 and 3 only need to carry audio from any of my sources.

Sources are:
2 cox cable boxes (there is an outdoor TV that I'm going to have an HDMI splitter and switch to be able to go back and forth but will need to be able to switch the audio as needed)
Sony blu-ray player
Apple TV

I've heard the 3312 may have an easier time of this. But basically I want surround sound available from the 2 cable boxes and blu-ray for zone 1, but that audio also needs to be available in stereo for zone 2 and 3 on demand. If when zone 2 or 3 are active if zone 1 needs to revert to stereo temporarily that's fine.

Thoughts?

I'm looking at a marantz SR7005. If i'm looking at this right it has analog inputs for every HDMI source?
[Link: us.marantz.com]

So if I understand correctly, if I have both HDMI and RCA output from the cable boxes and blu-ray player as well as a DAC to RCA from the apple TV it will play any of those sources across any and all zones ideally at the same time if desired? Or am I interpreting the setup wrong?

There are a number of concerns here.

Zones 2/3/4 do not have any DSP's to process Dolby Multi-Channel content. However, they most likely will process PCM two channel content and send that same signal to the remote zones.

Alternately, you can also connect either of the digital inputs (Fiber or Co-Ax) and or the analogue RCA's from each source device to accomplish the same thing.

Also keep in mind that surround processing creates a noticeable delay in the remote zones so you will need to play stereo or Game Mode in the Main Zone.

msm