syrotchen,

Thanks for your observations especially about HDMI. As you know we took a lot of heat about choosing to go with DVI over HDMI when we froze the design of the 990. Some of our customers went so far as to declare that decision was a "deal killer" for them and they went on to other choices.

Now a few years later many of us have attended technical meetings on issues surrounding HDMI installations. As I write this, I am involved in solving a major syncing issue between two HDMI "certified” products. It is getting a lot better. However there are still some issues. Last fall at EHX, I was involved in a multi-company demo that involved brand new HDMI v1.3 components (receiver and Blu-Ray player). "Handshake" issues plagued the demo.

Our good friend, Robert Fowkes, has written a very good piece on these issues. While published in October 2007 many of the issues are still very much of a concern today. I encourage everyone interested in this topic to read the article:

http://www.rfowkes.com/html/hdmi_article.html


As you all know the upcoming Model 997 will have HDMI connectivity. However for the record, if we had to make the decision all over again on the 990 what would we have done? We would have again decided on DVI. It has served us well and this pre-amp has been rock stable. When the 990 stock finally runs out, this model will be remembered as a classic- easy to use, great sounding and of course very reliable.