I'm anxiously awaiting my new HD-A2 to arrive. Up until now, I've been using an Oppo DVD player and have been very satisfied with the results. After holding tough for a while, I pulled the trigger on HD-DVD. I've read how good Dolby True HD sounds. Can I use this format with the 990? From what I read people keep mentioning that it seems that it can only be used with HDMI. Is this true? Are there any other 990/HD-A2 owners out there?

So far I'm very satisfied with my 990 but I do wish they went with HDMI instead of this now ancient DVI interface.

The HD-A2 does not have a multichannel analog output, making it impossible to get Dolby Digital Plus or TrueHD output any way except HDMI. The A1, XA1, and XA2 all include a 5.1 analog output to support these formats with the hundreds of thousands of non-HDMI receivers and processors.

I've grumbled quite a few times about my dissatisfaction with the way HDMI was introduced to the market (it's part of the reason I created my HDMI FAQ ). When the 990 was released, including HDMI with audio support would have been almost impossible - Anthem didn't get the AVM-50 or D2 to market until almost a year later, and they were basically the first to do it. Even today (something like 20 months after the 990 started shipping), HDMI is messy. The best guess is that HDMI v1.3 (the version that many consumers are insisting on even though v1.1 or v1.2 can do the job) won't come to market in a pre/pro until 2008.

So basically I'm going to be getting regular Dolby Digital sound?

Can I use the HD-A2 witht he 990 at all?

You can get what some people call a souped up dts....have not used it much since I have the hd-a1, and use the analogs, which I am happy with, but others have claimed it sounds better than regular dts. I think you will get the better DTS out when you select DD+ in the HD movie settings. If I remember correctly the toshiba's will convert the DD+ track to dts then output it on the digital connections. At least that is how it worked on the G1 toshiba's. Also, if you have a 7.1 speaker setup, you can use the outlaw to process the hda2's output with dpliix.

As mm_half3 points out, you will still get audio from the HD-A2 when listening to HD-DVD's. At least on the case of Toshiba's HD-DVD players, this is typically done by decoding and re-encoding as high-bitrate DTS (the maximum bitrate supported by DTS, specifically - something almost never used because of the space it consumes on a disc). I've heard of many users reporting quite good results in this manner - apparently it's a clear step up from standard Dolby Digital and medium-bitrate DTS tracks found on DVD's, even if it's not the full resolution of the original track.

John Menoni not every movies got Dolby Digital Plus or True HD look at back cover on of disk.
This is might help you http://www.dts.com/dts-hd/dts-on-bluray-and-hddvd.php I got panasonic DMP-BD10 990/7125 I play Xmen and AVP they both(DTS-HD Master Audio)sound dinamic is incredible the best I ever heard.

Blu-ray has approached the audio side differently than HD-DVD. HD-DVD has mainly been using Dolby Digital Plus with some TrueHD offerings. Blu-ray started out with a lot of multichannel PCM discs and a few DTS-HD discs. The catch is that no players (HD-DVD or Blu-ray) yet on the market can decode DTS-HD, so they are all using the legacy DTS track that is tucked in with DTS-HD. The Panasonic player is supposed to get a firmware update this spring that will add support for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD, which I think will make it the first to get DTS-HD up and running.