Thanks Relentless - I swear I'm gonna dig that manual out of the box and give it another look...

The Sherwood Newcastle P-965 does, so the 990 should also or at least it could be added to the firmware.

Firmware Update ADDITIONAL Suggestions:

Discrete Mute On, and Mute Off

UPSAMPLE Soundfield applied to ALL (Rear and Back as well as Front) Speakers

Discrete Back Speakers On
Discrete Back Speakers Off

Discrete Selection of each Dolby Soundfield

Discrete Selection of each DTS Soundfield

Inclusion of THX Soundfield

Inclusion of Logic 7 Soundfield

Room EQ Autoadjustment

I like some of those ideas - additional discrete codes could be handy, although they would have to be provided solely for third-party remotes (Pronto, Home Theater Master, possibly Harmony, and maybe even JP1 family remotes) since the included remote doesn't have any more room for additional commands.

THX is unlikely due to the licensing costs involved - it would most likely require an increase in price, with little or no actual benefit for the end user. Logic 7 is impossible because it is a proprietary processing package that is not available for licensing. At one time it was only available from Lexicon, but after Harman International bought Lexicon they began offering it on some HK products.

Gonk, I assumed as much, but it didn't hurt to ask ;-)

Re the discretes for back speakers, dts, dolby, and mute: indeed, it would prove to be VERY helpful to all of the users who use programmable remotes such as the ones you mentioned.

Perhaps the related ir codes could be posted in the somewhat universal Pronto Hex format, or in several different ir formats.

And, of course, the inclusion of upsample for ALL speakers may not require any ir changes...

IMO, the above inclusions, along with many of suggestions by others above, would make the 990 an even more useable product.

The upsample only works for PCM (Like 44.1 from CD) it seems the SP/dif only carries stereo information. The CD standard is 16 bit depth; as I understand it, we now use 24 bit depth, and "smooth" the word, as well as sample at 192k which raises the high freqecy artifacts far outside of the hearing range, as so less detrimental filters can be used (as opposed to the lower sample rates "brick wall filters")
Anyway, I guess you could use upsample before appling processing like DPL2 or NEO6 or stereo 5/7...

Exactly....

Thus one would get the benefit of the higher quality processing with all of the speakers vs. just the front two....

For those of us with small children, a "lock out" key sequence would be nice. I find that my (small) children occasionally pass the 990 and change my -20db volume setting to 0db. My wife seemed to think that razor wire was too extreme.... 8-)

The ability to route digital inputs to Zone 2 analog outputs.
- Ken

Or, designate one of the digital outputs as Zone 2.

Along with that, why not have the digitized analog inputs appear on the digital outputs. (Wouldn't work in bypass, of course).