Im old but new here, havent posted in a very long time. I'm starting to plan my next upgrade. Will be looking to upgrade my current 1050. Have not decided it I want to go seperates or receiver route yet. I am noticing that your equipment does not support HDMI connections. I am hearing alot about HDMI 1.3. What disadvantages are there related to no HDMI connections. Also, I have HD DVD players. They only unconvert SD DVD's thru the HDMI connections.

Would love to hear what folks here think about this topic.

I'll start by suggesting that you take a look at my HDMI FAQ - it's a general summary of just what HDMI means for practical use, including the various version numbers that exist for HDMI. It's confusing...

The current Outlaw line-up doesn't support HDMI, but it does support DVI - which, at least for video, is basically the exact same thing. For audio, it's a different matter, which I'll touch on in a moment.

Any players that will upconvert standard DVD's is supposed to restrict that upconversion to DVI or HDMI output. Native HD sources (over-the-air HD, cable/satellite HD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray) will output that HD content via component video. There is a flag included in the spec for both HD-DVD and Blu-ray called the Image Constraint Token (ICT) that allows a disc to restrict component output to a max of 540 lines. So far, no studios are using it (mainly because of the consumer uproar over the mere existence of the ICT option), so as of today it's accurate to say that all native HD content can be output via component with no loss of resolution.

HDMI offers support for a few digital audio formats that can't be handled by coaxial or optical. One is multichannel PCM, which can be from any number of sources (either the multichannel PCM tracks on some Blu-ray discs; decoded Dolby Digital or DTS; DVD-Audio; or decoded Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, or DTS-HD). This is possible with HDMI starting at v1.1. There's no real point to decoded DD or DTS, and the other options can also be handled via multichannel analog audio connections - although a single cable connection is certainly easier to deal with. HDMI v1.2 added the ability to output a DSD bitstream from SACD's. HDMI v1.3 added the ability to output DD+, TrueHD, and DTS-HD bitstreams for decoding in the receiver or processor.

The industry is moving to HDMI, that much is certain. The process by which HDMI has come to market is, at least in my opinion, an embarrasment and a burden on both hardware manufacturers and consumers. Outlaw has said that they have at least one processor in development (very likely two, but certainly one) but they don't have a publicly-announced delivery time table. As of last October, there was at least one key component (the DSP chip) that was experiencing delays at the chip manufacturer level - to the point where the final chip design was in flux, making processor development difficult. We don't know what the current situation is.