Space Station and Under the Sea are a couple of others, but from Hollywood only Up comes close. And I know I've beaten this horse before....but do we really think we'll get that same immersive experience from most home theaters with the relative viewing angle as small as it is?

I will wait it out and expand my disc collection. 3D will not make it to the real consumer market and be accepted for several years. Once that new fancy equipment comes out the price of the 2D stuff will drop enough to make it really affordable. I cannot imagine myself watching a movie at home with 3D glasses of any sort.

It's a good point, even if the horse does look a little dead - you'd probably need a big screen (front projection) to get the effect you find in the theater. My 40" LCD is as big as I can fit in our entertainment center, and the effect of 3D is probably not going to be as immersive as in the theater.

Ditto.

Does anyone here know for sure whether HDMI 1.4 and 3D will be able to go through the current generation of HDMI 1.3a receivers and preamps at least in pass-through mode? If not, it would make waiting for the 998 look like even a better idea.

As I understand it, nobody knows either way. The danger appears to be that it's entirely possible some, many, or all will have compatibility problems. I'll borrow my concerns on the matter from two earlier posts I made in this thread (since the thread's gotten a bit cluttered in spots):

I'd say the odds of at least some HDMI v1.3 receivers choking on 3D signals is extremely high. The most likely workaround will be 3D players with two HDMI outputs, one for video going straight to the display and one for audio going to the receiver. So far, though, a number of the announced 3D players have not offered that.

Seems like it is going to be an issue of compatibility. Some say it can work with software updates so as a 1.3 system can understand the 3D portion of the signal. But not all the benefits of 1.4 can be acheived via an update to the software. It appears that it is going to be quite messy out there once this kicks off. I think that there will be several problems in getting older gear to work with the new 3D content when relying on buggy updates to the software. There is no standardization for how that is to be done with 1.3 divices so far as I know. So a manufacturer could use standard HDMI 1.3 specifications and use some other sort of processing for the 3D content. This could lead To a limited compatibility with other hardware from differing manufacturers. So for me it would appear to be a plus for the 998.

Hell of a gutsy call, Outlaws. I applaud your actions. While I was one of the clients that decided to pull the trigger on an Integra 80.1, I will look forward to the 998's release and make an evaluation as to whether to return to the Outlaw's pre-pro corral!

Mike

Cheers to Outlaw for making the right call on the 997. And reading all this back and forth on HDMI 1.3 vs 1.4 vs 3D reminds me of another good call by Outlaw when they decided to forgo HDMI on the 990.

This actually brings it back to my original question. I realize that 1.4 internet and 3D content will not be able to be processed or decoded by a current generation preamp or receiver without at least a software update, or perhaps never. I was asking if a current preamp or receiver with HDMI 1.3 was set to pass through mode with no internal video processing, would it be able to transfer 1.4/3D content on to a monitor, the way the Outlaw 990 can successfully pass HDMI video content through HDMI/DVI and DVI/HDMI adapters. I would think that might be possible as long as HDMI remains pin-for-pin and wire-for-wire compatible.

I still think the answer is "nobody knows." In theory, it may be possible, but there would seem to be specific cases where it is almost certain that it will not be possible.

DVI/HDMI compatibility is be different than what we can expect to see with HDMI v1.3/v1.4 compatibility. After all, HDMI was based on DVI, and up until recently the video signals that one used were also supported by the other. The issue with 3D is that they are adding video signal formats that neither DVI nor HDMI v1.3 included. From a simple wiring standpoint, it wouldn't matter. It's when those signal formats get processed by a device in the signal path that things may get messy. Unlike the Model 990's DVI switching, many HDMI v1.3-based products actually process the video signal. That video processing is often an integral part of the video signal path, and it is built specifically to support the existing video formats we are all used to. Even now, some units have limitations with those existing formats. In some cases, they can't pass 1080p/24 through from a BD player to the display. I can think of at least one Faroudja-based receiver that converts 1080p to 1080i even if the output resolution is set to 1080p. Receivers like that would probably not be able to pass 3D content. It's like taking a 768p display and feeding it a 1080p signal - unless it has a video processor that knows what to do with that signal, all you're going to get is a blank screen or a message that it is receiving an unsupported signal.

The other concern is video bandwidth. The DVI switching in the 990 has enough bandwidth for the needs that existed prior to 3D. Will that switching start to have problems when you increase the video signal bandwidth requirements for 3D? Will the same be true for HDMI-based products that were designed to the same requirements? How will we know? At this point, I don't think anyone on the consumer side has those answers.