Nice chart - it looks like both Sony and Pioneer will have players with 7.1 analog output and full onboard decoding by some time this fall, although the chart suggests to me that the Pioneer units won't decode DTS-HD when they launch (will need a firmware update) and only the Sony S550 will be Profile 2.0.

You're right on the firmware. Any idea on what upscaler sony is using?

Since I have a PS3, I may wait for the Oppo, but my father will probably get the Pioneer. Extra's don't matter to him, so no 2.0 required.

I don't know what Sony is using for upscaling. The S300 is the last Sony player I looked at very closely, and I got the impression that its upscaling performance was somewhere close to (and possibly a bit better than) Panasonic's BD30. That would put it close to but perhaps not as good as your 980H or your PS3.

For someone who doesn't mind skipping on Profile 2.0 or doesn't want to wait to see what OPPO will come up with at some point, I'd probably look closely at the Pioneers, too.

about how many blu ray movies are their currently that use either PCM 7.1, DolbyHD 7.1 or DTS Master 7.1?

i'm thinking less then 5

Using this stats page I filtered it for just "7.1" audio and got a list of 35 titles total. Most were either DTS-HD Master Audio or LPCM, with one or two DTS-HD HR (lossy compression) and no TrueHD or DD+ at all. There were also 13 discs with 6.1 audio. For comparison, I let the list populate completely unfiltered and got a total of 714 titles. That's less than 5% with 7.1 audio or 6.7% with 6.1 or 7.1 audio.

That leads me back around to a question I had earlier in this thread: do any of these players with 7.1 outputs offer matrix processing to generate 7.1 audio from a 5.1 source? If they don't, then it may actually make more sense to use 5.1 output and split the surrounds as previously described. You'd compromise some on those titles that actually had a 7.1 mix, but you'd get all seven channels active for the 90%+ other titles that you watched.

thanks gonk for the advise.

but the only thing is i'm concerned by splitting the 5.1 to make 7.1 i would degrade sound quality as the info is meant to be heard from the side surrounds and not by the side and rear surrounds. i also heard that there might be noise cancellations involved also by splitting. in your opinion you still think i'm better off splitting and getting all 7.1 involved, rather then not splitting and just using 5.1?

Honestly, the choice is yours. How many Blu-rays are you watching, and how much benefit do you feel you get from having all four surrounds active? Even after I had a 7.1 input on my surround processor, I left my DVD-Audio/SACD setup at 5.1 for several years because I just didn't feel that I needed it. Of course, that was music, not movies, so the circumstances are a bit different.

Sound quality degradation should not be an issue unless you use a really dreadful splitter, and I've not heard of real-world instances of noise cancellation. With the mix of dipole and direct-radiating that you have, I have a hard time envisioning the circumstances that would create a real problem with cancellation, although I haven't actually done it myself so I don't really know how it works out. It doesn't sound like garcianc2003 has had problems with it, at least.

thanks for the advice gonk.

Prior to converting to the 990/770, I was running a Denon 3800 for processing, it had a neat feature which allowed you to use a standard 7.1 speaker set but add a "b" pair of side surrounds "ostensibly for music" then select a, b or A+B surround modes. I have Dipoles on the sides and used a spare set of direct radiating towers placed in the rear corners of the room, well outboard of the rear speakers, for the rear surrounds.
I would often use the B channels only for music, particularly most classical as I felt that this gave me more of the hall effect than the front side surrounds. For movies, I started out using A surrounds only, but eventually gravitated to using the A+B mode for almost all movies.Both for the directionality and the improved bass for the towers. I would think that this would give the same sort of effect that Gonk is achieving by splitting the side surround channels.
With the 990/770 I accomplish this by using a speaker selector for the surrounds. bi-wiring the towers so that my selections are dipoles only, Dipoles + bass from the towers, towers only or the works.
This requires an spltter and an extra pair of speakers, but allows you to split of the 5.1 surround signals and still retain the capability of utilizing the 6th and 7th rear channels discretly when appropriate.

Here's a bit of CEDIA news to toss into the mix. Panasonic has announced a replacement for the BD50 (the BD55) that's due out some time this month. One of the features is a 7.1 analog output. No word on price yet, though.