I purchased a B-stock 970 in late '06, and hadn't been able to set it up until now.

Loaded the new firmware, and proceeded to install. Great connectors, nice and solid. The build quality of the 970 overall is very good.

Once powered up, initial setup was fairly easy, only thing that happened was a strange sound coming from the right front channel, like the DAC had not fully decoded the digital stream. A reset of the unit solved this.

Sound quality is far, far beyond the price point of this piece of equipment. Previously I was using an Adcom GTP 830 pre/pro, and the Outlaw compares favorably in every aspect. Maybe the one thing I don't like so much is the delay in the display when changing volume, and the slight delay the pre/pro experiences when switching surround modes, kind of annoying with DirecTv which changes surround modes every time an ad comes up.

Stereo playback is exceptional. I have rediscovered my CD collection, using a Pioneer Elite DV-45A universal player connected to the 970 via the coaxial digital output. I was surprised at the very high quality of the DACs, and stereo music sounds sweet and detailed. Granted, I did install a Musical Fidelity X10v3 tube buffer between the L/R outputs of the 970 and the L/R inputs of my Adcom GFA 7000 amp.

Surround sound is also extremely good, my reference DVD is peter Gabriel's Growing Up Live, possibly the best-recorded DVD out on the market. Mercy Street sounded sweeter than I've ever heard it, and the positioning of the instruments and musicians was extremely accurate.

DirecTV playback is also very good, my only complaint being the slow change in surround modes, which occasionally leaves a small part of audio out between changes.

The video quality blew me away! I had my DirecTV HR20 HD DVR previously connected directly to an Optoma RD50 DLP RPTV. The picture was good enough, but when I saw what was coming out of the Outlaw I was simply floored! SD channels look almost (but not quite) as good as HD channels. The upsampling really works!

So, all in all, so far I'm quite happy and impressed with the 970.

I'll post up more impressions as I live with the 970 for some more time.

Thanks Outlaws for this exceptional product!

I didn't think the 970 did anything to the video signal other than switch between sources. Could it be that you had a bad cable or connector?

composite and S-video...
are up-converted to component at 480i...

Technically, what's being done there is transcoding rather than up-converting.

I stand corrected...

One thing I did notice, is that I can't use the remote to turn the system on. For powering off it works fine. Is this the way it should be?

That is in fact correct - sort of.

The 970 provides discrete on and off commands, which is great when using a third-party universal remote that offers macros (like my MX-700 or the MX-500 that I used to use). The way this is done is actually pretty convenient, once you understand what is happening: the "Power" button is a "power off" discrete command. Any input button (Video1 through Video4, DVD, CD, ...) will also serve as a discrete "power on" command at the same time that it sets the 970 to that input.

If you want to watch a DVD, just press "TNR" to control the 970 and then pick "DVD" - the 970 will turn on and go to the DVD input at the same time.

got it! kinda like European TVs... had a helluva time figuring those out LOL!

I just ordered a Harmony 1000 and will use that as a master control.

Thanks for clearing that up.

And thank you for not screaming at me: "RTFM!!!"

Last night I experienced the first "no-audio" issue. Was flipping thru the DirecTv channels, (am a consummate channel surfer) when the audio completely dropped off.

The surround mode change was between DD and PLII, the DTV box is connected to the 970 with an optical cable.

Changed channels and audio came back partially, turned 970 off and back on again and audio came back in full.

Have you installed the beta firmware? I don't know what version of firmware your 970 shipped with, but I'm certain that it's not the beta.

Yes I did, before setting up.

Since I put the 970 in an enclosed cabinet that's pretty difficult to access, I left a serial cable connected to the back for future updates.