I haven't been around in years since my 990 has been working perfectly. But a couple of weeks ago I hit a snag that I can't find mentioned in the forum--search didn't find this one has been mentioned. I tried to watch the Sarah Conner Chronicles on Fox-TV local outlet OTA channel 27.1 in Champaign, IL. I got no audio--every other channel works fine with the same settings. The OTA channel 27 comes in fine with audio--it's just the digital that has no audio. I have fiddled with all the buttons and can't figure this one out.

I have a Sony SAT-200 acting as the OTA tuner and am feeding a dig. optical input into the 990.

Any ideas?

One possibility: a screw-up by the local affiliate. I've run into similar issues a number of times (although not lately) - for a whole, the local CBS affiliate had a bad habit of taking a Dolby 5.1 source and only broadcasting the left and right channels for the HD feeds. The result was a Dolby 2.0 track with no dialog. Errors like this rarely affect the analog broadcast, as they've had the bugs worked out of that system for decades.

Very interesting.....I've had the same thing happen. Often, for now apparent reason, 5.1 DD is broadcast in stereo, then the commercials are broadcast in surround and normal programming goes back to stereo. Always thought that was strange, but since it also happened with my previous AVR, didn't think it had anything to do with the 990. I notice most often on NBC nightly news and NBC national HD golf broadcasts in Sacramento.

No one can say that the move to HDTV is insufficiently supplied with confusion... Some broadcasts are intentionally broadcast as Dolby 2.0 (no reason to do a surround mix of a guy sitting on a soundstage reading the news) while others are Dolby 5.1 - and ads can easily differ from the main program. Thankfully, the local affiliates around here seem to have cleaned up their acts a bit when it comes to broadcasting in HD, as I haven't run into the left/right-only Dolby 5.1 broadcasts in a while. Don't ask how confused I was the first time it happened...

Thanks team! I feel reassured. I think it is the local affiliate. About an hour after my post they went off the air altogether. I don't watch them much--except for Fox football--but I get the impression that they are really low budget and small town.

If it continues I will speak to them and I'll let everyone here know what they say.

On the first episode of Sarah Connor my local broadcast was terribly off on lip synch. All other stations and sources were fine just that one program and it drove me nuts. Subsequent episodes were fine.

Consider yourself lucky; that show is absolute sh#t.

Good point but then why shouldn't it be like the rest of the programs?

That local Fox station digital is still off the air.....

Welcome to the future, DTV!

My local NBC and Fox stations still don't broadcast in full HDTV. They're DTV, but just 480p. So, the Superbowl (on Fox) will be underwhelming.
Last year, the local CBS broadcast the Superbowl in HD, but in the 3rd quarter, it went off air. That was nice. I think it's a conspiracy with the local cable company to get people here to spring for digital cable.
I have DirecTV, but I'm not in a big enough market for them to offer the local stations on satelite. Usually the CBS and ABC stations will switch to full HDTV for the priometime shows, but the podunk NBC and Fox still don't.