Regarding 12stepper's problem, I have Cox HD cable with a Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8240HDC box, but for a similar reason to Chessie, I don't route the video & audio through the 990. I use HDMI from the cable box to my Toshiba 52XF550U LCD TV. For audio, I use the optical output on the TV to the 990. This works well with no problems. In fact, the 990, coupled to a 7700, has been awesome in all respects with both movie and music audio. I'm very satisfied with my purchase. My only nit is I've used loudness compensation with previous receivers, and the 990 doesn't appear to have that function. However, I can live without that.

I did initially have an issue with no sound on the HDMI output from the cable box. After searching all of the Scientific Atlanta and Cox documentation and finding nothing that would indicate a setup change needed for this connection, Cox technical support was called. Tech support laughed, said this was a common problem that often resulted in people taking their TV's back to the store, and then provided undocumented setup information that got the HDMI audio working. I offer this experience to suggest that a call to Verizon tech support might be worthwhile if that has not been done. There just might be some undocumented information that would cure the audio/video problem.

Regarding strindl's question about upsample mode on CD's, I've been using that and am quite satisfied with it. I did make some other changes from my previous CD setup to the 990, so I can not say if all of the improvement is due to upsampling, but my CD music has better clarity than before. I really should do a comparison between the various modes, but have not taken the time to do that.

Bill