That's assuming that the DSP is underpowered in the lower models. Most often, the parts are the same or very similar, but bits are turned off or otherwise crippled on the cheaper version, but the development costs remain essentially the same for the entire product range.

When it comes to software like that, the cost is typically spent once in writing the software and they just write it in such a way that they can turn stuff off as needed for the "lower end".

Thus they can charge a premium for it at the high end, but in terms of cost to produce, the added feature does not increase cost.

Not sure about this but Sherwood Newcastle has a P-965 replacement coming out this year (May) and they hinted Outlaw would have their own version.

4 HMDI ins, 1 out. All the latest codecs. Reon chipset. Trinnov's innovative equalization programming (that is different and in final product superior to the competition).

It's going to sell for $1499 just like the unit it is replacing.

So perhaps we will see a $1099 Outlaw version.

Are you talking about the Sherwood R-972 receiver, or have they actually indicated they'll have a processor version of it? The R-972 is going to be $1800 if I remember correctly.

No I'm talking about a replacement for the P-965. Jeff over at Sherwood wasn't too sure if they could make May which was why they weren't announcing it officially at CES.

Seems the Cirrus Logic chipsets for HDMI 1.3 are extremely backlogged and slow to get to Manufacturers.

This chip problem is the reason for just about every manufacturer not having HDMI 1.3 units out. The manufacturers who can purchase in mass bulk are the only ones who have received them (the big boys so to speak) the others are waiting rather impatiently.

Sherwood sells more Receivers than Processors so the R-872 and R-972 got more attention from them considering the chip delays.

This means to me May could be the earliest we may even hear of a 990 or 970 replacement.

Could be the 1070 might be replaced first.

is it even confirmed that Outlaw is going with the Sherwood model again?

I would really like to see 2 HDMI outs.

Lotus's post seems to suggest that someone at Sherwood's CES booth hinted at such, but if that really is the case it would be the first hint we've had. The only word we've seen from Outlaw is that something (apparently more than one something, actually) is in the works.

Two HDMI outputs would be useful for folks running both a projector and a flat panel display, but I believe it gets into some potentially hairy HDCP issues and (possibly because of that) I've seen some things that suggest that not all two-output receivers actually have both active at once.

gonk wrote:


Two HDMI outputs would be useful for folks running both a projector and a flat panel display, but I believe it gets into some potentially hairy HDCP issues and (possibly because of that) I've seen some things that suggest that not all two-output receivers actually have both active at once.

Concerning the outputs: it would be great if the two outputs were slectable, thus with four inputs you would have a 4 x 2 matrix.

gonk's thoughts about HDCP problem may well be the key here. I bought (and am sending back) a monoprice.com 4x2 HDMI matrix switcher. After insuring that cables, sources and destinations were all OK I could not get it to pass a signal.
Tech sent a replacement. Same siguation. Getting refund. So maybe a matrixed output will never happen. Thoughts?

The problem that occurs to me when doing this inside a surround receiver or processor is signal processing. If you have one HDMI input going to one output and another HDMI input going to a second output, which one is receiving the audio (and often video) processing that is one of the surround processor's principle reasons for existence? Which one is feeding audio to the main zone? Basically, whichever one is going to the second output is going to have to be a pure pass-through of the HDMI signal - the expense required to afford the second output any sort of real audio processing capacity is going to get ugly fast, which is hard to justify for a feature that very few users will ever need.

Agreed hard to justify cost...and I belive Gefen has one for big bucks, so gonk is right that if that circuity was and could be included...up goes the price, bigtime.

I was disappointed in the mnoprice matrix not working. It's price of $90 was quite appealing. They, of course have other switchers with one output, but that's not what I wanted....and who knows, maybe their 5x1 would fail also.

My suggestion?

A vacuum tube output stage!!!