just wondering on the 990 do i have to toggle through DSP modes or is there a direct path to a specific Mode ?
for EX:on my Yamaha with the push of one button i can pick Dolby Digital, With another i can pick Theater Etc (hope this makes sense)
also didn't get many hits on my last post i live in between to big hills and i want to use my cable tv cable for FM Radio can i do that ?

The 990 has three buttons for surround modes. "Dolby" will scroll through any available Dolby modes, "Stereo" will scroll through any available stereo modes, and "DTS" will scroll through any available DTS modes. Which modes might be available with each button depend on what the incoming signal format is. For a PCM stereo or analog stereo source, for example, "Dolby" would offer some Pro Logic II modes as well as Dolby Virtual Surround, "Stereo" would offer 5-Ch Stereo (and 7-Ch if you have surround back speakers), Stereo, Bypass, and Upsample, and "DTS" would offer NEO:6. For a Dolby Digital 5.1 source, on the other hand, "Dolby" would offer DD along with DD EX and Pro Logic II modes as well as DVS, "Stereo" would offer Upsample only (which uses straight Dolby Digital decoding along with upsampling), and "DTS" would do absolutely nothing. Page 13 of the manual has a good overview of the modes offered by the 990.

I'm really not sure about using your cable TV as an antenna for the radio. The cable would serve as an antenna, true enough, but I wonder about the actual cable signal overriding that natural antenna effect. They're covering pretty different portions of the spectrum, but I don't know if the tuner would disregard the cable broadcast or get messed up by it. Unless somebody around here has done it successfully, I'd call or e-mail Outlaw before doing it to make sure it won't have an adverse effect on your tuner.

I had something unusual happen this weekend while viewing a Blu Ray copy of Lord of War. This disk has a 6.1 discrete DTS-EX track, and while using it I could not change the dolby modes. When I pressed the Dolby button, the 990 display flickered for a second to what I think was dpl-iix movie (hard to tell since it only flashed), then went back to DTS-EX...think it may have even said discrete DTS-EX on the 990 display. I don't remember this happening with other DTS-EX dvd's, like say Gladiator, will have to verify it. Wonder if this is a bug in the 990, the way the 990 should behave, or related to the way a PS3 is sending the audio track over an optical connection.

A DTS-ES Discrete track must be decoded with DTS-ES to get that discrete surround back channel, so any time the 990 would try to switch to PLIIx (which is of course an option for DTS tracks on the 990) the ES flag on the track would force you back to ES. I think this is the result of the 990 doing exactly what it's supposed to.

I've encountered similar behavior before with DTS ES discs and some Dolby EX discs (the Lord of the Rings EE discs behave this way in both cases), although with my DVD player the 990 has been able to wait until some event such as a chapter skip, paused playback, or other interruption in the bitstream to revert to DTS ES or Dolby EX (at which point the process of re-acquiring the bitstream caused the flag to force the 990 to change to the ES or EX mode as the disc demanded).

Thanks for the explanation Gonk...now that you mention it I do remember the LOTR TT EE acting like this. After fighting with it for a few chpts, just left it with the EX track.

Yeah, that's a fight you won't win. Dolby and DTS have arranged it that way, although not all Dolby EX discs include the flag that produces this behavior.