hello fellow outlaw members. due to the recent bug, it is time to pull the plug on my 950. what is good about the 990? I read, researched and reminised about the 990. boy! what a dream! should i not worry about its' size? is it worth the tea in china? your thoughts

I really like my 990, but at this point, I'd probably wait for HDMI if you are at all interested in the future of DVD, espcially the audio end of it.

If you've read my 990 review , you probably have a good idea of my take on the subject. The 990 was a fun upgrade from the 950 (more robust video switching, better DAC's, editable input names). It's large, but whether or not it's a problem depends on your space - for me, all it took was enlarging and cleaning up a hole that I'd already had to cut in the entertainment center for my 950, so it wasn't an issue.

The HDMI issue is one that is still troubling. I've tried to pull together a fairly comprehensive summary of the situation in my HDMI FAQ . I don't expect any of the surround processor manufacturers to get HDMI v1.3 hardware to market before the end of this year. Sherwood's announced a big receiver for July or August that would likely have a processor sibling, but I really think they're being overly optimistic - the sample they had at CES didn't even have the final number of HDMI inputs on it, and even after the hardware gets dialed in there's going to be a lot of software to deal with to get the assorted new video switching and audio processing issues working right (in addition to the myriad of audio and video issues that must be taken care of without factoring in HDMI). There's still a lot of guesswork, but I think that waiting for HDMI is likely to translate into waiting for 2008. Of course, you can get HDMI v1.1 receivers right now from Yamaha, Onkyo, Denon, and others, and HDMI v1.3 receivers will start appearing from at least a few of those companies by mid-year.

The benefit of waiting for HDMI is that you will be able to get DVD-A, SACD, HD-DVD, and Blu-ray audio formats without waiting for a single universal/combo player that would connect to the 7.1 Direct analog input. Of course, that universal/combo player may not be far behind HDMI v1.3 processors. And of course if you watch the forums and people talking about HDMI devices, you will find that the standard is still a pretty messy place to play - DVD players and displays can't always negotiate HDCP handshakes properly and switching devices (both receivers/processors and simple switches) can mess up HDCP handshakes even moreso, just to name a couple of the most common problems.

Is the 990 worth the tea in China? I'm not much of a tea-drinker (I know, blasphemy for a southerner), but I'm mighty fond of my 990.