Ok back again. I purchased the Pioneer BDP51FD with 5:1/7:1 audio. I hooked it up to the 7.1 and the coaxial audio on the 990. I am having problems with the video going through HDMI to DVI cable. I works direct to monitor but not through component in on t he 990 or the HDMI to DVI adapter.

One of the reason I got the Pioneer is for the 7.1 audio output. I had understood that this would transfer the signal via analog cables/input. I have tried several settings on the Pioneer, I assume should be PCM?

And do I understand correctly that you cannot assign the 7.1 audio via the 990 menu to other sources? When I set up processor for 7.1 I get sound out of only two channels. (center - right) and yes I have double and triple checked the hookups to ensure correct.

Help

Waiting for the 997 which hopefully will get rid of the rats nest of cables in the back. Thanks in advance for any assistance.

I don't have the Pioneer ( I have a Sony S550) but I intially had a similar audio problem.

I checked the Pioneer manual online and you have to make sure you have the Audio Output on the Pioneer set to "Multi-Channel" and your Outlaw on 7.1.

Regarding the video why not just run the HDMI from the player directly to your display? I do that and no problems.

You can mate th 7.1 input on the 990 with any video source that you wish to. Acess via the input configuration on the main setup menu.

The setting shouldn't really matter when using the analog output - after all, to get any audio via analog, it has to decode it. I'd have to download the Pioneer manual to say more, but I'm about to run off to another meeting.
The 7.1 Direct input is a completely separate input, like "DVD" or "Video1", so you can't assign that audio connection to some other source. What you can do is assign any DVI or component video input to 7.1 Direct, even if that video connection is also being used by some other input (like "DVD").
You are only getting center and right channels? If it was left and right, I'd suspect that the Pioneer is downmixing everything. I'd start out with the player's speaker settings in that case.

Thanks for all the quick input back. I will try it out tonight and let you know. The feedback from the forum is one of the best feature and one reason i will hold until the 997