Another advantage of having the audio inputs assignable is that you could use more of the video inputs - I count 11 video inputs on the back of the 990, but you can only use any 7 of them once because you run out of assigned V inputs at 7 (and that assumes you already cheat a little by assigning one of the component or DVI inptus to V5). Yes 7 is a a lot and you are already forced to use S-Video after the first 5 inputs....but I use 4 just by connecting my DVD player and cable box twice (audio vs video, and audio can be S-Video), then throw in an XBOX, and you are already at 5 inputs for a relatively simple system. If one could assign the audio inputs you can free up to three more S-Video connections by assigning a component or DVI input to "CD", "AUX", and "TAPE". It hardly matters what the "real" name of the input is because most of us rename them and use a different remote anyway.