ready to drop the hammer an a new hk avr235

1-sell the carver and increase your budget by that amount.
2-bi-amping the right and left isn't helping as much as you think. On HT, the center and sub do the bulk of the work.
3-I think you touched on headroom. Some brands may be rated at less power but will sound bigger with less distortion due to better power supplies and lower distortion. Once and amp is pushed to clipping, it has to recover for any output to sound good. I really doubt that 50 watts will do it.
4-NHT's are great speakers. However, they definitely need/want more than 50 watts to come alive.
5-You need to decide if you will use all of the features on the HK. Denon will sound better and have more power, just less features.
6-Don't forget about the remotes. All HK's may not come with the same remote. Consider having to spend another $100+ on a universal remote if you get a cheaper model.
My final suggestion/comment: Make sure you get a center channel that is voiced the same as the r/l.

Forget about the size of power cords - go look at an arc welder to see if size matters.
Understand the way sound / power works - it's logrithmic. Doubling the power will give you a "just noticeable" difference in sound volume. But for a doubling of sound volume you'll require 10x the power. So, to respond to your question, 15 additional watts won't do Jack (small j or big J?). Multiply the receiver's power times 10 to get a substantial effect.
You're thinking about 50 watts to the tweeter and 100 to the woofer, without any way to balance? 50 watts to a tweeter (without going through a crossover) is pretty sporty - good luck.
Have to recommend like Elevick that you think this through first. The Carver by itself may be better than using the HK at all for the fronts (does the HK have pre-outs?)
For $500 you could get one of the Denon's or older "high-end" Yamaha's (I used to have a DSP 3090 that was pretty good), that should be able to make fun of the HK, and not have you running aound doing weird things with you amps.

thanks for the sugestions, Elevick. i have realised that bi-amping is not really going to work. if i set the fronts to small speaker the bass amp will see nothing. i will probaly use the carver to power the whole speaker, like i'm doing now unless i can find a reciever with clearly more power. most recievers i've looked at have only 20 or 30 watts of headroom.

i will look into the denon and onkyo thx. onkyo was heavy, big transformer and caps, 100 wpc. about $700.

i am going to buy a nht center. rear ch is full size and sound about the same durring test tones. effecient and go down to about 32 hz. i would like them to help out with the effects.

my thinking was to use the hk as a preamp and get a good 3 ch amp for the front 3 in the future. i was looking at the specks on the onkyo tx ??702 and the amp section lookes to be as good as the carver im using. looking closely at the carver specks the 200 watt dynamic power rating is a 2 ohms so the onkyo amp looks to be almost exactly the same. actualy a little better if you look at the thd .08 at rated power. i hope it is not exagerated, like some of the other avr's.

if i am not going to have to buy a 3 ch amp my budget will go up to about 750. but the amp would still be an option down the road, i will not buy anything without pre-out.

thanks again everybody for sugestions and comments.

onkyo tx sr-702 or integra dtr-6.5. they are almost one and the same. power specks identical, s/n ratio is 6 dB higher on integra. integra has detachable power cord. both are 33.5 pounds and seem to have the same remote. $200 price diferance.

are they going to preform the same? which is a better deal?
$700 for the onkyo, $900 for the integra.