Thanks braidkid. I always wondered if the reason that Outlaw Audio choose the name Outlaw is that giving electronic consumers honest value is against the laws of consumer electronic retail. One major pet peeve of mine is all the people (especially reviewers in whose mags the reviewed company advertises) who claim to hear differences that are totally subjective and can't be documented. If a reviewer doesn't test blind A-B in the same room with absolute level equality and no processing or tone controls, what they say is meaningless. Speakers make more difference than any other component by a wide margin followed by amps. Media quality is often ignored, Garbage in--garbage out and there are some bad sound tracks being sold. The reason why I use a DEQX is to greatly improve the speakers and make the amps' life simple. The processor is a lot less important for overall quality reproduction since most modern pre-amps perform quite well -- but pre-amps and processors have lots of features, bells and whistles that vendors can change and sell more of.

Consider also:

Neither Anthem nor Outlaw have Firewire in--bummer
7.1 track media doesn't yet exist
Outlaw has 7.1 analog inputs but Anthem doesn't
Video processing is best done outside the audio processor
Some will need Anthem's upcoming undoubtedly great video processor
I don't need it so why pay for it
You are really renting equipment from the industry, it's a cost of entertainment