Damn! My memory isn't as reliable as I thought that it was. Steve Withers didn't after all mention the pseudo-Atmos effect, but Richard Stevenson did, in his review (in Home Cinema Choice 243, February 2015) of the Denon AVR X5200W receiver, which does Atmos and via an upgrade, Auro 3D. The review isn't yet online, but he says "A sideline of Dolby's Atmos initiative is the new Dolby Surround feature. This post-processing reduces user options but self-selects the best option for your chosen speaker setup. Thus if you have height channels connected, for instance, the Dolby Surround mode will default to Dolby Pro-Logic IIz in the absence of an Atmos bitstream. The best part of Dolby Surround is its ability to 'upscale' non-Atmos material and map some information to your Atmos speakers. This gives a solid 3D sound effect even with Dolby Digital 5.1 material. It's something of a 'virtual height' system and works well. If you have gone to the effort of setting up Atmos speakers, Dolby Surround will be your friend no matter how many channels the incoming stream has."
Mind you, Steve Withers does say in his Marantz SR7009 review, (yours!) that "Of course the big new feature is Dolby Atmos and it didn't disappoint, delivering the most immersive surround experience we have had at home. We found that we preferred using the 5.1.4 configuration, as opposed to the 7.1.2 because the sense of immersion was greater and we didn't miss the two rear speakers. In fact the precision of the localisation of effects and the panning of sounds was quite remarkable, even with just five speakers." which you yourself have now endorsed! *smile*