And

incorporating most (or all) of the 1.3 specs

970 v.2 - in July 2007 ($750)
990 v.2 - in October 2007 ($1250 - remember - now they have to put the higher quality DACs for all 8 channels)

Is this doable???? wishful thinking?????

Well, I've juste updated the HDMI FAQ to address HDMI v1.3. It seems we're both thinking about HDMI this morning...

It's possible that Outlaw will try to roll out new HDMI 1.3 processors as soon as next summer, but even if they retain the existing platforms and fit HDMI into them that would seem to be difficult. The specification was just published this week, and the main focus this year is likely to be getting 1.3 into the PS3 (so the HDMI chips for a v1.3 input may not arrive as soon as the output chips). The 990's already got the same DACs for all eight channels, so they could potentially keep the analog section of both units and try to gut the DVI sections, change up the digital audio input side to support HDMI audio inputs, change the DSP section to support the HD audio formats (something that the 49400 chip used by both the 990 and 970 will likely not support, if I had to guess), and get all of that into production. It'd be sort of cool to see them do it, but I'd be stunned to see an HDMI v1.3 Outlaw product before late 2007 and I'd rather they take the extra months to get things right (analog to digital video transcoding to the HDMI monitor output handles everything, confirmed compatibility with a number of different v1.0, v1.1, and v1.3 sources, and things like that) than see them wrangle HDMI into existing platforms just to be quick to market.

I don't want to sound negative or anything, but a small company like Outlaw can't afford to have a product generation that is only half-baked and I worry that modifying these existing platforms to handle HDMI v1.3 would run a strong risk of ending up that way. New products purpose-built to work with v1.3 (and the more complex decoding and video management issues associated with it) would be a much safer business choice as well as a better deal for the consumer in the long run, but that means more design work - and that means time. I'd be quite happy to be proven wrong by Outlaw if it meant products with effective v1.3 support shipping in 12 to 14 months, but if I had to guess today I'd honestly not expect an Outlaw HDMI v1.3 product coming out before December 2007 or early 2008.

Gonk:

Great update to the HDMI FAQ.

Agree that the changes are complex and that we shouldn't expect to see Outlaw HDMI equipped receiver and processors before end-2007.

Two years after the release of HDMI 1.1 spec, there isn't a single pre-pro under $3000 that is capable of doing 1.1 audio. That is really sad...

(I know that some receivers in the $1000 range do 1.1 audio, but I can bet that their audio quality is nowhere close to that of the Outlaw 970 or the Emotiva LMC-1.)

Outlaw and a couple of other companies developed products that allowed some of us to enter the "separates" world (lower price). I just hope that we won't have to wait 2+ years for a <$800 processor that supports HDMI 1.3...

SB

I think the absence of surround processors with HDMI v1.1 support can be linked directly to the inevitable arrival of v1.3, with some secondary responsibility going to the confusion surrounding the HD format war. If v1.1 had been a long-term standard (rather than one that was current for just over one year) we'd have likely seen HDMI support appearing sooner, and if the HD-DVD/Blu-ray mess had been less uncertain that would have helped even more.

Now that we have an HDMI standard that should (hopefully) be around for a while and both formats have been finalized (more or less - some interactivity content is still a bit hazy), the way is open for actual progress. The engineer in me suspects that we'll be waiting at least 18 months or so before any processors show up with HDMI v1.3, but I don't have any hard evidence to support that estimate - it could be a little sooner (which would be cool) and I doubt it'll be too much longer.