Update, turned out it was only a optical cable, I didn't know they could go bad. I have never even moved it. The 950 is still going strong.

Reading this thread has made me a little leary about the life span of my 990. I realize that there is a 5 year warranty, but I expect to get more life out of it than that. Did these 950's have adequate ventilation? I am looking forward to the new processor, but at $1,000+ it too should last much longer then 5 years. Brian

First, the 950 and 990 are entirely different products - they aren't even built in the same factory. Second, the 950 is now approaching six years old (the first batch shipped out in early April 2002) and a lot got sold over the course of three years. That generates a large pool of hardware "in the wild" that the bell curve suggests will exhibit some failures.

i thought my 950 died... the display went blank. sound still worked though. i pulled the plug and restarted it, and display works again! i think a recent blackout had something to do with it. hopefully it will go on for a few more years.

My 950 still works fine, but when it does fail, the likely culprit will be oxidized / dirty contacts on the between-PCB headers. There are a whole bunch of those types inside the 950.

My 950 seems to be withering. In a previous post I stated my issues with the increased frequency that the 950 was losing the configuration settings from memory. Now over the weekend the unit has stopped responding to the remotes. If I turn off the unit and unplug, that appears to help for a short while then back to no response. Every so often it will work for one volume change (or partial change) then stop responding. Of course this happens at 5 years 3 months of ownership....sigh
I may look into Altec's likely culprit.

You might try unplugging the headers one at a time and squirting some contact cleaner into them. Just a small amount works best.

I recently started having the same prob... random drop outs on digital inputs. reset did not help. I just hooked up my cable box to analog and time will tell if it makes a difference. If anyone gets this worked out, please keep this thread updated. Also, to the Outlaw peeps... since this problem is somewhat common, can you identify the fix and or average repair cost?? I'm like 50 days out of warranty

TIA

Jeff

I can't help with any sort of advice for a fix or a possible repair cost, but if I were in either Keta or Thade's shoes I'd drop Outlaw a line via phone or support site .

Argh, it turns out that it's not the Optical cable like I thought. After watching "I am Legend" last night everything worked great. Today the 950 does the usual hunting for an input and now shuts down after a few minutes. I was waiting for the next generation of Pre/pro from the Outlaws, I am holding out for HDMI switching, but I might just get the 990. I still think they are the best value around.