rduke - Not to throw cold water on the 7.1 analog outputs but I think we may never see any players with it. My feeling is by the time we see 7.1 software the world will have moved to the HDMI interface.

I don't believe that the 990 can applying processing to the analog 7.1 inputs, although I'm not at home to check. If you could applying say DPIIx processing or DTS NEO you could get sound to the rears that way. Maybe a possible upgrade to the 990?