Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs now have (or soon will) newer versions of Dolby and DTS data streams. Is there any plans for a firmware upgrade to the model 990 to be able to use these new (and improved) audio codecs? I am talking about Dolby True-HD, DTS-HD and DTS-HD Master Audio.

As I understand it, the 7.1 digital signal for these codecs won't be passed through by regular coax or optilal digital cabel, but via HDMI.
Since the 990 has no HDMI capability, There's no way to get the signal except, of course the 7.1 analog in if any of the players ever get around to offering a 7.1 analog out.

It's more than just HDMI that will be needed to do decoding of the native Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio (lossless)codecs. First you need HDMI 1.3, which we won't see in any quantity for more than a few months in the AV receiver or processor world. Next, these audio codecs require a significantly greater level of DSP processor horsepower than is available in almost ANY current AV recevier or surround processor. I can't think of any receiver or processor out there, even those with HDMI, that could add TrueHD or MA with a software upgrade. By the time you are done it is almost a complete hardware re-do.

I've said it often, but my HDMI FAQ was written specifically to detail the specifics of these new audio formats and how they relate to our hardware.

There is no upgrade path possible for adding Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, or DTS-HD support to the existing 990 and 970 platforms via digital input. The existing 7.1 analog inputs are there specifically to provide a way around this (just as was the case with DVD-Audio and SACD).

The problem is that you need at least HDMI v1.1 to get these formats via digital connection. With v1.1, the player must decode the format to multichannel PCM. (At the moment, of course, there are no decoders for DTS-HD Master Audio in any HD-DVD or Blu-ray player, just to give some idea of how bumpy the format launches have been.) If HDMI v1.3 is available at both the player (meaning the Toshiba HD-XA2 or the PS3, the only HDMI v1.3 compliant sources available) and the receiver or processor (none of which are yet available), then the bitstream for each of these new formats can be passed to the receiver or processor for decoding.

I wonder if there was any ever thought given to the possibility of splitting these new bitstreams and sending one part out the digital coax connection and the other out the toslink connection. Perhaps fronts and center on one, surrounds and LFE on the other. Obviously it would take major firmware updates on receivers and pre/pros. I'm not even sure two S/PDIF have enough bandwidth or if there are other limitations I'm not aware of that would make this impossible...