You're probably right about the smaller vendors not implementing the internal blu-ray drive but the streaming/app piece: We'll see. Concerning the internal blu-ray drive, Denon already has done it. S-5BD. NAD also has the same thing with a DVD drive. NAD Viso Five The VISO has gotten good reviews for audio and video performance (even from The Absolute Sound). Thus, I think high performance is possible, it's simply a matter of vendor implementation and will. To be clear, what I find attractive in the concept of fewer boxes, not any current implementation. Like you, I value performance and won't give it up in the interest of fewer boxes but I see no reason why those who want it can't have both.

Given Peter's recent comments about the disaster in Japan, we should consider ourselves fortunate if the 978 ships by the end of the year:

"To say the least, the entire parts situation is completely up in the air. Everyone is scrambling to determine what this means for their products- component by component, and the information about availability is changing daily.

Expect disruptions all across our industry..."

As noted in the "Who" thread, the picture of the rear panel of the 978 says "made in P.R.C.". I would think that as many parts as possible would therefor be made in China. However, it seems that they don't know right now what components come from Japan, and what impact that will have on the release.

My wishful estimate that the 998 follows the 978 by six months is based on the assumption that the 998 differs only by the implimentation of Trinnov. The 978 was only created to get something to market more quickly. In fact, before adding Audyssey MultEq XT32, it was scheduled to be out by the end of this month.

Just wondering....let's say the 978 sells for between $1500-$2000. It's feature set looks really good, but do the "higher end" pre/pros like Classe, Bryston, Lexicon etc. offer much better performance & sound quality, or is it really just a case of fancy metal work and the fact they are sold through dealers instead of direct? I know this is hard to answer as the 978 isn't even out yet. I guess what I'm saying is I don't want to sacrifice sound quality, but I don't want to (grossly) overpay, either.

My $0.02? Outlaw's products have historically hit at something of a sweet spot on the "diminishing returns" performance curve - you can get better sound quality if you pay more, but it starts becoming more about subtleties in improvement than in truly eye-popping improvements. Companies like Classe, Bryston, and Lexicon thrive on the consumers who will pay more (sometimes a lot more) to obtain those diminishing returns. Part of the cost increase is perfectly justifiable because it starts costing a lot more to achieve those gains. Part of the higher prices is inevitable because of the distribution channel they use. And yes, sometimes the higher price is because of the name on the faceplate.

A perfect example of the potential cost impact associated with achieving these improvements, taken from another Internet direct company, is OPPO Digital and the difference between the BDP-83 and BDP-83SE or the BDP-93 and BDP-95. The 83SE and 95 cost 80% or 100% more than their siblings, with the cost difference resulting solely from improving analog audio performance. The R&D costs and hardware costs required to achieve those refinements led to the higher price tags.

That being said, we can also look at OPPO Digital for proof that those "higher end" brands can sometimes get lazy and simply over-charge their customers. The Lexicon BD30 is a $3,500 Blu-ray player that Lex "assembles" in Indiana. As it turns out, they bought the internals for the player straight from OPPO's manufacturing partner, BBK, and dropped those internals - bottom chassis plate and all - into a slightly taller cabinet. The only physical changes were a different front panel, taller rear panel with different silk screening, and a different cover. Lexicon worked with OPPO to get the video performance adjusted to satisfy THX's video benchmarks, but those adjustments were made in the base player and simply carried over to the BD30. Functionally, the BD30 is a BDP-83 with a taller chassis and thicker face plate. For a price tag seven times higher than the BDP-83 and almost four times higher than the BDP-83SE, Lexicon customers got a player that performs just like a BDP-83 but doesn't get firmware updates as fast because Lexicon has to have the OPPO firmware re-packaged into their own files with their own splash screen logo. (In some cases, the delay has been months, although right now they are current with OPPO.) That means the BDP-83SE (or the newer BDP-95) represents a better product, both in customer support and performance, than the more expensive Lexicon. Just a reminder that it's sometimes important to do your homework.

Good insight, Gonk. We're not talking a $500 or even $1000 difference between a product like the Outlaw 978 compared to, say, a Classe SSP-800 or the upcoming Bryston SP3. It's actually over a $5000 difference! I'm just curious about the performance difference and would love to be able to compare the BOM's for these products to the Outlaw 978.

Gonk,

Your comparison of Outlaw to OPPO is quite apt. I have an OPPO BDP-83SE paired with my old Outlaw 950. The 950 has a very clean analog pass-through mode and the 83SE sounded like a good enough improvement over the stock 83 that I felt the upgrade was well worth the money. While I have enjoyed my Outlaw 950 for a few years now, the DACs on the 950 sound somewhat thin and brittle compared to the DACs on the 83SE with lossy DVD soundtracks.

I like my 83SE, but I would like to have DACs that are the same quality as the BDP-95 or at least BDP-95 for all of my sources. I also would like to have the option to use a state of the art room correction technology like Trinnov or Audyssey. Finally, as nice as the OPPO 83SE is, it does not support 24-bit streaming music. I really would like the option to render high resolution, multichannel FLAC files on my new pre-pro. Cover art would be preferable, though dumb rendering with an iPhone, iPad, or Android interface would work just fine.

My 950 has served me well, my 83SE works well enough with physical media, but I really want something that will make all of my content sound as good as possible. I'd also like to be able to access all of my content from my computer without having to turn on the projector to drill through a folder-based menu system. It doesn't seem like this is too much to ask in 2011, but no pre-pro or Blu-ray player seems to be able to handle all of these tasks, yet alone at a semi-reasonable price.

Jimbo, did you really register in 2003, and this is your first post? If so, you are a patient man.

Just to amplify what Gonk said from a different perspective, I moved to a Outlaw 990 prepro from a Theta Casablanca with Superior DACs several years ago. The price difference between the two products was six fold and though I did notice a decrease in sound quality for CD-based content, it was only slight and frankly after a few days forgot about it and simply enjoyed the 990 because I found it to be musically satisfying.

Several years later I'm in the same position with my Denon AVP-A1 prepro. In terms of build, features, and performance I couldn't ask for more and I consider it to be in the reference class as prepros go. It even has a reasonably priced upgrade path for HDMI v1.4. However, I'm going to pounce on the 978 as soon as it becomes available because I'm confident it will deliver 90-95% of the AVP's sound quality at a third of what I expect the AVP to sell for. I can think of a lot things to buy with the difference in savings...

In this spirit, I'm pretty confident the AVP will be the last expensive prepro I own. At this point for me it simply makes more fiscal sense to purchase-and replace as appropriate-prepros in the cost sweet spot. IMO this sweet spot is $1200-$1600 in terms of price vs. performance.

Case in point about value: The first HDMI update for Theta's Casablanca III (and it must be vIII to accept this update) just became available in Q1 of this year. Price for this upgrade: $4995!

Thanks Eric - Just the kind of info I was looking for.