Hi:
I've been an outlaw fan since the beginning. My trusty (purchased in 2002) 1050 has moved from main to secondary, to garage duty over the past few years. It's always been a Paragon of good value/ surprising performance. I have a RR2150 that I got used, awesome piece! What I'm looking at now is whether I should buy the current 990, or a Sunfire TGP-5. I already own a Sunfire TGA-5400, which does a stellar job of starting and stopping and vibrating the various speakers in my system. My question revolves around sound quality only, as the video is fed straight into my new Sammy 50" plasma, so no video switching/transcoding needed! The 990 is $700.00 new at the Outlaws, and the TGP-5 can be found for $1300.00 with factory warranty on authorized closeout. Will the current 990 provide the same level of audio bliss(both 2-ch and Movies) as the much more expensive TGP-5? If not, should I wait for the new 990 and see what happens? I love both Sunfire and Outlaw, Having owned fine products from each. I simply worry about the overall sound quality performance difference. Any Ideas or Experiences? Direct Sound Quality Comparisons by some Lucky Outlaw???
Thanks, Jeff.

The new version of the 990 is likely to include all of the bells and whistles for HDMI and Codecs that the the TGP-5 and the current 990 don't have. Sunfire MSRP for the TGP-5 is $3500 so if you can get the older technology for what the newer stuff costs I am sure you will be disappointed somewhere along the line. Why do we put ourselves through the effort of comparing the Outlaw gear to equipment which is priced 5-10 times higher and expect it always to win the comparison. For $699 right now you get one heck of a Pre/Pro for less than the price of what the new OPPO BDP will cost. Save the $$$ and get both items for less than the cost of the TGP-5 or the new 990 and you'll be happy listening and watching now instead of waiting for some ephemeral equipment to materialize.

My thoughts are similar to XenonMan's. At the original $1100 price, the 990 offered a lot of value. Pressures induced by HDMI v1.3 and time in production have paired to yield an even lower price for the 990 (we're at $700 instead of $1100), so I think that if you go that route it's very hard to argue against it. On the other hand, Sunfire's processors are undeniably solid products. Will it sound better? For movies, the answer is probably "no" - but for music, there may be some benefits (although it's hard to quantify those, and they are likely to land solidly in the realm of "diminishing returns"). If you don't need HDMI v1.3, either option is fundamentally sound.