I wouldn't say that there's no much love - Rotel is a good brand, and they are solidly built. There are a few of us that have preferred the sound of Outlaw's gear, but there are others who felt differently too. I've got a co-worker with a Rotel setup (1068 paired with a 1095 driving B&W's for center and mains, no sub or surrounds at this point) who is quite pleased with it, but when my wife and I heard it we preferred our Outlaw 950-based system (and the 990 is a nice upgrade from that). Unfortunately, I was judging a complete system - speakers, amp, and processor - that was set up in a different space, so it's difficult to point to a single component and lay the blame on it. There's also personal preference to factor in, so even blame becomes dubious since it's a matter of what different people like. My recommendation would be the 990, but then I also own a 990...

There are some things about the 1068's options and feature set that I liked. Like the 990, it offers editable input names (a great feature that the 950 lacked) and video transcoding (s-video and composite video transcoded to the component video output). There were a few other features like this that the 1068 offered and the 950 didn't, but the 990 matches up with the 1068 well on those and adds the DVI switching and balanced pre-amp outputs. The 1068 does allow for different sepaker settings (large/small) for different modes (Dolby Digital, DTS, and stereo) - that's the only feature I can think of that it offers which the 990 does not. The remote that comes with the 990 is pretty basic, but the remote that comes with the 1068 drove me (and my co-worker, and his wife) nuts. It is a learning remote, which is nice, but it is only a learning remote: there are no built-in codes that you can make use of. The manual also frustrated me - all the info you might need is in there, but the layout didn't feel intuitive to me and it left my co-worker (a 60-year-old professional engineer who had been into high-end audio for a couple decades prior to making this purchase) completely lost. Depending on how familiar you are with setting up a surround receiver or processor, how supportive your dealer is, and whether you will use a third-party remote, these issues may or may not be problems for you.