I haven't used a 970, but I believe that it's very similar to the 950 that I used to own. Of course, I disabled the "pop-ups" as soon as the feature was added. If you are using a composite or s-video input, a message would appear on screen showing the current volume any time the volume was changed. Likewise, any time you change inputs or surround modes, there would be a duplicate of the front panel information shown on the bottom of the TV. There are some examples on page 12 of the manual to let you see what it would look like. This is all dependent on using a composite or s-video source, of course, and if you are running a plasma then the only such sources are likely to be older gear like VCR's and LD players, older game consoles, camcorders, and maybe something like the SMS-1. DVD players, HD cable/satellite boxes, and such devices are going to either use component or DVI/HDMI instead. In my case, the only video source currently hooked up to my system using composite or s-video is my SMS-1 (although my old Dreamcast would also be hooked up that way if I still had it in the system) - my old VCR goes straight to the DVD-R.