If you have a Blu-ray player with 5.1 or 7.1 analog outputs and onboard decoding of the new formats, the 1050 will still give you those new audio formats. For a long while, that was a difficult thing to find, but there are now several options. Panasonic's BD50 has been replaced by the BD55 (which added a 7.1 analog output in place of 5.1 but did very little else), so that may be a good value if you are buying today. Other options that I can think of are the BD55, Sony S550, and some Pioneer players. There's also a bit of discussion about the upcoming OPPO Blu-ray player (BDP-83) which will offer these features among others, but we don't know when it will be out or what it will cost.