Hi Outlaws !! Glad to see you guys are still around. I've got an ICBM which I've placed between my Sony TA-P9000ES and my amplifiers, (Hafler Transnova 9505 /9303's), used to power a Vandersteen 5.1 HT set-up. (It works great - it is incredibly flexible and great-sounding,,,,reminds me of Dahlquist's old DQ-LP1 crossover of yore, but with six channels.) Anyway, here is my question - my combo of a Sony TA-E9000ES processor / TA-P9000ES preamp / ICBM provides great sound and flexibility, but it is three freaking boxes and requires a LOT of interconnects, (currently DIY Kimber PSB wire with a bunch of Canare RCA's and Wonder solder). I was looking at upgrading to the 990, but I don't think it has the flexibility on the analog side to do what the P9000ES / ICBM can do. Do you guys have any plans to offer an analog preamp with the Sony's level controls and built-in ICBM capabilities in combo with a digital processor ? Is such a product just too specialized and hard to do right these days? I'd like to upgrade to a 7.1 set-up, but I don't want to take my DVD-A or SACD analog outputs through a digital preamp, unless the thing can take the digital input directly and convert to analog ONCE. Also, does anyone have a clue what will be coming out of the HD-DVD / Blu-Ray machines, WRT audio and video formats ? Will thay make everything in my HT obsolete ? (I've got a SharpVision 9000 with component video inputs only) What are you guys hearing ??

Outlaw has not announced a product similar to what you are describing - I suspect the market is too small and the development and production costs too grear for an outfit in Outlaw's markeet niche to attempt.

There's been some discussion here in the forum as of late about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray (or a unified format that was being considered recently but is looking doubtful at the moment). There will be a couple new audio formats (Dolby Digital Plus and DTS's HD format, which I think is called DTS HD). Both of these will be passed digitally using a revised version of HDMI (details of the updated HDMI are not finalized). Presumably, most of these players (with Sony's PS3 being an exception) will include on-board decoders and 7.1 analog outputs so the hordes of existing receivers aren't useless, plus I suspect that there will be optical and coaxial digital outputs for DD and DTS (or some sort of "downsampled" form of DD+ and DTS-HD). HDMI will be the video output of choice. Component will still be offered, but there have been hints for several years now that the studios would like to restrict component to 480p in the future (since it does not offer encryption, unlike the HDCP-compliant DVI and HDMI routes). I have some doubts as to the feasibility of this because of the sheer size of the HDTV user base that lacks DVI or HDMI inputs. Overall, it's still a little too soon to tell exactly what we're going to get with Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.