I'd take te defense of the 7.1 input a little further and sugest adding a second one. those of us who are SACD/DVD-A fans have no means of utilizing new 7.1 formats touted for HDDVD and Blue Ray.
I know a few years back Sony made a device that allowed 2 sets of multi-channel ins to be switched
but I don't know of anything like thet on the market today (anyone else know of such a critter?)
i would think there could be a reasonable niche market for such a product with the new DVD formats competing for the multi-channel input.