Now that I've had mine for a day ( ) - I'd like to see the preamp outs swapped location wise with the 7.1 analog inputs. This would place the outputs at the bottom of the pre and make it easy to cable to the Outlaw Power amps - which I think most people would put below the 990 on a seperate shelf. Currently - you have the 7.1s crossing with the pre outs as most dvd/sacd players are above the 990 in a rack.

I agree, inputs should be on the top and outputs on the bottom of the Pre/Pro.

That's an excellent point - the 1070/970 got this right, but the 990 (which used the P-965's layout and filled in the blanks with extra stuff) is reversed from what works best for most of us.

I'm ready to throw a whole new perspective in on this. As a computer geek and technocrat, I foresee 2006 being the year of the Media Center PC. The grand majority of people will, towards the year end, be getting them.

Think about it. Everyone is starting to get wireless to network their homes, and by year end, they will be wanting a Media Center PC. It stores all their media, from DVDs, CDs, old home movie VHS tapes, current digital video tapings and more, all in a single location that offers quick access to any media you want at any moment. Then the networking allows that media to be shared elsewhere through out the house as well.

If you really think about it, the PC offers the modularity customization for the media devices and then all that gets sent via DVI and optical cable to the pre/pro. If you wanted to really minimize, the 990 would need only two component jacks, DVI and optical into it and all the other components would be managed by the PC.

I believe it's definitely something to think about. This might be a good thing for Outlaw, in the fact that they can concentrate on sound and let the PC market handle all the changing digital standards in video/HDMI. Sure they still need to have DACs for the separate channels, but they might be able to offer the higher end DACs since they have less inputs and accompanying circuitry to worry about.

Though a tuner has been a Outlaw standard and also 2006 will see the emergence of HD Radio, if I'm not mistaken. So, you will get CD or better quality audio from the airwaves. Perhaps even SACD and DVD Audio formatted music, coming out all 5 to 7 speakers (plus the .1) Heck, the DVD Audio and SACD market could easily use some free advertising to get there sales finally going, if they haven't just given up all together.

So, I would say that Outlaw may want to consider reducing the component inputs for digital, even reduce a few analog, say the S-video and analog 5.1 channel inputs and just let the PC market handle that. It is very easy for the PCs to do the analog to digital conversion. They do it already.

If you’re not familiar with it, most of the new motherboards are equipped with digital optical audio out jacks on top of their own speaker outs with stereo mini jacks. But most importantly, it’s a good solution to the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war. Don't worry about what one you're going to get, or what Motion Picture company supports what format. It's just a simple drive purchase for your Media PC and you can buy one of each and store it in you RAID array to be played wherever and whenever you want.

Now, sure not everybody's going to go Media PC immediately, so Outlaw may still need to offer support for the audiophiles out there that don't like change. But, I bet the majority of you Gunslingers will be looking into it and getting one in a year or two.

Now if Outlaw wants they could round a few of us technocrats up and make a side company to do custom Media Center PC's for it's clients. But that is my wishful thinking.

Thus, that gives my different perspective on what will be needed to improve the 990, even though I'm still using my 1050 with a 750 and ICBM. But I'm planning on upgrading this year as I get into the HDTV arena and get rid of my NTSC CRT rear projection Sony 52".

By the way when is the 790, 300W @ 8 ohms x 7 balanced input amp coming out?

----------------------
The only good is knowledge and
the only evil is ignorance.

The idea of a media PC appeals to me - or even better, a media server (capable of storing DVD's and uncompressed CD's) that can be accessed from networked clients around the house. I think that even with the plummetting cost of hard drives we're not quite there yet for storing complete movie libraries (whether it's a HTPC or a server somewhere else in the house), and the thin clients are still evolving for the server concept if you want to include video in the mix. It's still not quite time to start removing inputs from processors, at least component video, digital audio, or DVI/HDMI - people are going to continue to have cable or satellite, DVD, HD-DVD/Blu-ray, game consoles, and other stuff to hook up.

A PC in my media room isn't appealing at all. A networked appliance (I think they're being called "media hubs") that can go to a remote (in a closet someplace) media server and display/play content located on that server is very appealing.

I think most of those devices are based on Windows CE, but a few (the Apple for instance) are probably not. The Universal Plug and Play media sharing spec (created by Intel I think) seems to be the standard they mostly use. Server software is available for any platform one is likely to want.

I don't think a "media PC" in the form of a PC in the media room will ever catch on.

EDIT:

Although the world could use a good media hub gizmo from a non-computer company. I think Phillips actually has a reference hardware design available as well as a few products. Maybe Outlaw should think about a device based on an existing reference design like that? I'd buy a few if they were well thought out and nice looking.

First, charlie
That's the idea, that the house has a main server/computer room with its storage there but shared via network (ethernet or wireless 802.11g or better)to other rooms. So a case like this:





would easily fit in your rack. It's standard width and then all you have to do is connect it to your home network and access all your stored media from the server. Now I'm not that sure about 'media hubs'. They all seem to require a PC somewhere in the connection process, so your still getting a PC.

Now gonk,
Don't be so sure. Do you know how many companies are offering Media Center PCs? All the big boys are doing it, and you can get a Terabyte of storage for around $600 and the prices will easily be dropping by year end. Sony released a home server with 1 TB of storage in October 2004. (source) As well, most motherboards have SATA I or II in them for easily making a RAID array yourself of a Terabyte or more.

1,000 Gigabytes or storage, should easily handle most of today's needs. Sure, Blu-ray and HD-DVD will start pushing that at a max of 120 GB for HD-DVD with eight layers, and Blu-ray being 10GB more per layer, maxing at 200 GB. But the industry, though they have it already working, are not going to release four layer until 2007 and eight layer by mid 2008 or 2009.

Now, they may start releasing their higher formats earlier with HVD coming fairly soon with 3.9 TB storage capability. But anyway, movies do not need that much storage at 1080p resolution. True, HDMI cables currently won't handle the bandwidth frequency needed for 1080p with audio signal, but DVI-D can take care of the video needs of 1080p, and that's a standard out of current video cards for any PC.

Now something to note though, is that these PCs can do multiple displays, so Outlaw may want to incorporate more than one DVI video out connection, for those who would want to have their movie/TV on one screen (the big one) and their desktop on another. But as well, the user can just use the existing DVI out to go to their desktop monitor. So it's not a necessity.

Still, sure I like playing graphic intensive games at 1600x1200 (4:3) or 2100x1600 (16:9), but 1080p res, 1920x1080, is not that far away from it, so I'd like to see a computer game on my 80" front projection screen or even just surf the web that way. And, I'm guessing many others out there don't have that many different desires than me.

They require a Universal Plug and Play media server, not a PC. There are even NAS solutions out with UPnP servers embedded in them. You upload the media to the NAS, and the media hubs can find and play it.

I'll probably be building a Linux server with uShare and a few other services (Samba, OpenVPN) running on it with a 1.5 tb RAID or so.

Sounds decent but, do they offer web browsing capabilities or computer game playing?

And it's still conneted to a PC or Personal Computer. That can be a "server" or "desktop" of any OS like MAC OS X, Windows Vista or even Linux offering peer to peer services. It's not a mainframe offering TTY terminals to multiple clients.

Gonk wrote:
I think that even with the plummetting cost of hard drives we're not quite there yet for storing complete movie libraries

That is correct for movies. Perhaps OUTLAWS will consider such a unit for CD & DVD storage. Random access is great.

Movies aside, I use a hard drive recorder for archiving as well as listening to music. I can put approximately 104 hours of redbook stereo on a 200 Gb Seagate (or whatever) drive. Using 2 channels I feed them into TAPE input of 990. The length of a "song" (as the machine refers to it) is not limited to 80 minutes on a CD. So for example I could assemble the entire Beethoven Sonata library (32 sonatas) into a continuous play...or break them up...or "make projects".

It is convenient