Emotiva or stick with my Anthem??

Agreed.

Andthem is probably a bit out of my price range anyway. There should be some decent choices in between Emotiva and Anthem- thankfully it's not an either-or situation.

I own Rotel 1068 and my fathers owns Lexicon MC8 and to be honest there isnt all that much daylighte between the two.
I get around HDMI with straight HDMI video wire and internal decoder for disc player into multi channel RCA bypass........that saves A TON of cash!
I have used and like room EQ but its not a deal killer either....hell we got by without this long right?

Goatwuss, The Anthem is great, but no HDMI which means I'm
confined to a 5.1 system via analog from my BDP-05 player. I currently have two monitor audio gold series 10's as wall hangings.

Yeah honestly, I would like to hear the UMC-1 sounding terrific (if it actually ever gets released), myself. However, the proof is in the pudding.
Even a good review or two would not cement anything, imo. We, the people, still needs to get one OF these in our hands to actually see what's what! Until then, it's all sales hype, speculation, more he-said, she-said, and hopeful promises.
SO WHERE IS THE DARN THING?! WE WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE THESE AVAILABLE BY LAST CHRISTMAS, FOR HEAVEN SAKES!

I was on the preorder list for the UMC, then the more I found out about it, I realized it wasn't for me. The topper was the DACs it's using, CS42518 is usually found at the low-end of AVR lines like the Onkyo 6xx. The hard core supporters on the Emovita lounge try to explain it away as "it's how the DACs are implimented" but you can put lipstick on a pig but it's still a pig. I do believe in Emovitas business model, but they still need to make a buck. So to the waiting buyers that think they are going to get a $2500 pre/pro for $700, good luck. I will have to hear it for myself before I would be convinced it will compete with units in that price range.