Add to that the recent history with the 970's notorious "no audio" issues, and they're probably very gun shy about releasing anything that may be even remotely buggy.

Yup, and when it comes down to it, none of the new features are really necessary to create a very good home theater experience.

And other than Onkyo/Integra, what other manufacturer has a prepro out that supports HDMI 1.3 and all the lossless multichannel formats and costs less than $2000?

Given that there's only one other prepro that does all that near Outlaw's price range, I think that the Outlaws have plenty of breathing room for the moment to come out with a high quality product that has all the bells and whistles that one would expect from a modern day product.

Personally, I'd rather see them deliver a product that was a few months later than expected but was less quirky than the 990 while still delivering the sweet sound quality.

Those are good points. Another thing for me -- as much as I'm itching to jump to the next codecs -- how many DVDs are out there that are encoded with either Dolby True HD or DTS HD MA?

A couple weeks ago, I was thumbing through the HD DVD and Blu Ray bins at Circuit City looking for both, and it seemed like there weren't a whole heck of a lot. That's really compounded if you like lesser known / quirky movies.

IMHO, until the number of releases catch up a bit, a jump to the new formats would amount to an occassional treat scattered among far more numerous viewings of standard def' DVDs and/or those encoded with the lossy formats. Which means for a lot of movie watching, the only Hi-Def aspect you'd be able to enjoy is near-HD quality upconversion through the player.

I don't know how many TrueHD and DTS-HD tracks are out there in relation to the total catalog of HD titles, but it is certainly spotty. Through a couple sales and a good number of free disc deals, I've got close to thirty discs in hand or due to arrive eventually - of those I think I have five with TrueHD tracks (one of which is Digital Video Essentials on HD-DVD), a couple with multichannel PCM, and none with DTS-HD. Maybe that's one reason that I'm not terribly stressed about HDMI v1.3 support in my processor...

So setting aside the setup disc, only 20% have the lossless formats. Good reason not to be stressed

BTW, there was a discussion on a related thread about the benefits of decoding the new codecs in the pre pro vs. the player. I've got to wonder, would the audible benefits be that discernable? Personally, I think subtleties between equipment is much easier to discern with simple, two channel stereo compared to surround sound. First, there's so much going on across so many speakers. And second, it's mostly spatial clues or sound effects. So you've got to wonder if we're talking really diminishing returns between the two.

Now, I recall gonk that you said only by using the digital streams via HDMI 1.3 to an outboard pre/pro would you be able to take full advantage of Dolby PLIIx, etc. But if that's the case, I envision you could configure an existing Outlaw system by getting a DVD player that has multi-channel out for True HD (available now) and DTS HD MA (available soon?), run them to your 7.1 inputs, and for everything else, just run digital out to a spare input on the 970 or 990 and toggle between the two based on what surround format you wanted.

Or am I missing something here?

For TrueHD, I would expect it to be difficult to tell, as my understanding is that it is very similar to DVD-Audio's MLP (making the decoding process relatively straightforward and thus harder to get wrong). In that case, it would take a real mistake in hardware or software development to produce an audible difference. DTS-HD Master Audio is apparently a real processing bear, though, which is why the only Master Audio decoding available today is in receivers or processors.

The biggest thing that I see as a potential benefit for HDMI v1.x versus the 990's 7.1 Direct input is PLIIx. There is still very little 6.1/7.1 content available on HD software, but a fair number of 7.1 home theater setups. With nearly all HD-DVD and Blu-ray players offering only 5.1 analog outputs (when they have multichannel analog output at all), the only way to use the rear surrounds is to split the signals from the surrounds of a player's 5.1 output. That's not exactly earth-shatteringly important, but it is a consideration. Also, the 990 remains very unusual in its ability to apply bass management, time delay, and channel trim to a multichannel analog input, so there are a lot of other home theater setups that are relying on the player for those capabilities.

Gonk, here's how next gen codecs break down by the "big" studios in HD/BD:

Universal: Mostly 24-bit Dolby Plus, a few Dolby TrueHD. Seem to going with TrueHD more and more.
Fox: Every release has DTS-HD Master Audio. Most are 24-bit.
Warner: Mostly 16-bit Dolby Plus, a few Dolby TrueHD.
Lionsgate: Some multi-channel LPCM, some DTS-HD.
Disney: Pretty sure all releases have multi-channel LPCM.
Weinstein: Mostly 24-bit Dolby Plus, a few Dolby TrueHD.
Paramount: Mostly 24-bit Dolby Plus, a few Dolby TrueHD.
Sony: All releases have multi-channel LPCM, some Dolby TrueHD, seem to be moving towards TrueHD.

I just bought my first HD component. The Samsung HL-T6187S. It only supports HDMI 1.1, but I'm not worried about it. I know 1.3 can support a larger color spectrum or color bit, but I'm not concerned about it at all because I probably wont notice the difference.

I'm not concerned with the TV having 1.3 audio support because I'll be using a Pre/Pro configuration for audio and not the TV. I'll be waiting on Outlaw's next pre processor with hopes that it has several HDMI 1.3 ports. In the future, I'll be making sure all the components have HDMI 1.3.

Right now it doesn't make much of a difference to me because there's still little content. I rent most of my movies from BlockBuster and I have only seen a handful of Blue Ray movies. Next year I'm sure I'll rent movies from NetFlix and I plan to buy the Samsung BD-UP5000 with it's 7.1 analog outputs. I think I'll be using that with the DVI option on the 990 and be quite content.

I use to feel the need to rush into HDMI 3.1, but not anymore. I still have a rockin system without it.

HDMI v1.3 does support more video bandwidth and greater color depth, but there are currently no sources that offer that greater color depth - so it's real hard to get upset about not having it in a display...

I've also read that it's unlikely noticeable by the human eye. I'm going from a 7 or 8 year old Sony CRT flatscreen to a high def screen.. I'll be happy,.