I think keeping the 990 and getting the Samsung BD-UP5000 combo player will make better use of my money. Then I would have 1080p output, analog out for all the new formats and both HD DVD and Blu-ray. Now all we have to do is wait for the Samsung to become available.

I just read the review of the Samsung BD-UP5000 in Sound and Vision and am disappointed. The internal audio decoder failed miserably. The unit they reviewed was a pre-production unit so maybe the production unit won’t have these problems but for that kind of money these problems may steer me away.

The unit they reviewed had lip-sync issues when using the 7.1 analog audio outputs. They also couldn’t set the distance for each of the speakers. Can the 990 compensate for these issues when using the 7.1 analog inputs?

The 990 can take care of distance and channel trim settings via 7.1 analog input, as well as bass management (which is likely minimal if they don't have distance settings per channel), so that's not a big deal. As for the lip sync issue, I am pretty sure that the 7.1 Direct input allows AV sync - it's classified as a video input, and all of the other video inputs allow it. I'd have to go into the menu and double-check to be 100% certain, though, as I don't think I've ever used it for that input.

Thanks gonk. I can't imagine they would release a unit with lip sync problems but it is good to know that the 990 can take care of the distance settings and bass management. I’m going to keep the BD-UP5000 on my wish list.

Just to follow up - I have the den to myself for a bit this evening, and remembered this thread. I confirmed that the 990's AV sync adjustment is available with the 7.1 Direct input, so even if the UP5000's video processing is creating a sync problem the 990 can correct for it.