A really dumb question, but never afraid to show my ignorance, here goes. In the 950 manual on page 15 it shows the video connection going from the IN on the recording device to the IN on the 950 and the same with OUT. Is this correct? I always thought OUT went to IN.

Graphical error - "out" should go to "in," as you thought. Check out the audio portion of the VIDEO1 connection (both analog and digital), as those properly go from "out" on the 950 to "in" on the recording device (and vice versa).

yeah, thanks. My 950 is starting to show it's age I am starting to think about upgrading to a 990, but I am not sure if it's a little late. With newer technology coming out. No direct HDMI and a rather old DSP chip. The price is down to 799 for the month of March. Not sure if the 990 is the way to go.

I think it's probably a matter of deciding what you plan to do with your system over the next few years. Do you think that you'll pick up Blu-ray soon? If so, are you currently using your multichannel analog input? We can expect to see more and more Blu-ray players with onboard TrueHD and DTS-HD MA decoding available soon, at which point those could be paired up with a Model 990 and provide essentially the same capabilities as an HDMI-equipped processor. In that case, you could get a 990 now and hang on to it for a good while without sacrificing much - you wouldn't have an EQ solution like Audyssey, but you've also already got an SMS-1. On the other hand, if you delay your upgrade until later this year, you could be able to get an HDMI v1.3 product with lots of new bells and whistles.

My 950 still does 90% of what I want, and the 990 never enough extra to even consider it - at least not for very long.

This is one 950 owner who is willing to wait for the next unit - whether it's later this year or early next.

To me buying a 990 now would be somewhat like investing in an HD-DVD player and a half dozen HD-DVD movies to go along with it.

Jeff Mackwood