I have a 990/7500 setup in my music room up north and absolutely love it for all kinds of music. I have a PC and an iPod and a turntable and a CD/DVD player all connected and the 990 pulls in some decent FM stations even out in the sticks. I especially like WGWG 88.3 The Range from Gardner Webb university. It plays all kinds of music and lets you listen without a bunch of commercials. Sort of like the old WDVE in Pittsburgh Pa. Great station for album rock.

Why are we still sitting here without any news after two weeks for a status update that was supposedly already "in the works"... If "things are going very well", why haven't we heard anything? I understand the reluctance to release inaccurate information, but it would be nice to know more about what's going on. I just don't understand why an update takes so long to be released.

I agree completely. I fear that my posting a summary of my somewhat reassuring conversation with Scott may have caused Outlaw to further postpone an official status update.

I wouldn't worry about it GaryB. I had a silimar conversation with a person at Outlaw via EMail that suggested year end. I used to check this frequently, but have now decided if I 'have' to take the leap I can look at the Marantz and if not, the new processor would make an awesome Christmas gift to myself.

hmm, the only flaw i see in the demo i saw, was 5 hdmi, 6-8/2 should be standard..

a bigger in the chassis, support for 9.x/11.x should be standard, lan should standard

more component inputs, s-video inputs double spdif..

my best suggestion to outlaw to do, is get hold of the denon avp, marantz av 7005/8003, onkyo 5508 plus 3 units in each brand within 4-5 models within the top end avr ..

i would also look at pioneer and yamaha avr's...

this is straight R&D to see what you can improve on..


power needs to be compliant for 220/240 vac

We've talked about all this before...


We've known we were going to have five HDMI inputs for a long time now. The AV7005 has six, but one is on the front panel - there are only five on the back. I'd be happy to have more, but it's not unreasonable to settle on five.


A bigger what in the chassis? It's already roughly the same size as the Model 990, by the looks of it, and that's pretty darn big.

Support for 9.1 pre-outs would be nice, certainly, but at this point the Model 978 is hardly alone in only offering an eight-channel DAC. The AV7005 does the exact same thing. Marantz stuck extra pre-amp outputs on the back, but they can't all be active at once - a move that has the potential to be misleading to consumers who don't dissect the manual enough (or read Outlaw's guide) to figure that out. As a trade-off, their eight-channel DAC is an ESS Sabre chip. Assuming they did a good job of building an analog stage around it, that's fairly awesome. Adding an extra two-channel DAC chip of equal performance (unless you don't mind a disparity in quality for the height channels) would be a not-insignificant change in price. And 11.1 would require having Audyssey DSX (which I haven't seen mentioned as being included) or the new DTS mode that didn't show up until they were well into development.

As for LAN, they explained their reasoning. They are a smaller outfit, and developing all of the services that are expected once you add a network port is a massive undertaking. We'd be waiting until 2013 to get it if they did that, I'll bet. If you want that, buy a Roku or AppleTV or WD box for $100 or so and move on.


They included three component inputs and three composite inputs (one on the front) plus six digital audio inputs. In this day and age of HDMI connections, that's actually a pretty nice offering. As for s-video, it's been fading for a while now, and Outlaw's not the first to drop it from the rear panel of a surround processor. The AV7005 also omits them. Also, they did include one legacy connection that is really rare: MM/MC phono.


Considering the fact that they technically only sell to the US (and sometimes to Canada), their sales volume for markets with 240V power is tiny. They've offered 240V on some power supplies, but it's far from standard for their stuff - simple economics, as the payback is probably somewhere between poor and nonexistent to add the extra cost in pursuit of a few extra sales.

One thing I wish is that it had a set of balanced stereo inputs for a higher end CD player to be connected and used in "bypass" mode. I know a lot of good CD players, and even the top Oppo DVD/CD player have balanced analog outputs. I am using 5 balanced outputs from my 990 to the 7500 amp.

Right now with my 990, I'm using the Digital RCA/Coax input from an Adcom CD changer from the mid-90s. I guess if I upgraded to the 978, it should sound better using this same connection, due to the different DACs in it.

Also, I'm using a Panasonic Tube 36" HDTV from 2001, and all it has is 2 sets of Component 1080i/480p HD inputs. One is connected.to the HD DVR cable box and the other is connected to the DVD player. I see 3 sets of Component video inputs on the 978, but no Component video output. That means I couldn't pass-through my video through the 978. Naturally, whenever I update my TV, that wouldn't matter since those all have HDMI, but that might still be a couple years out.

By the way, is there still planning to be a 998, or just the 978?

I would expect so. The ESS chips I've used in the BDP-83SE and BDP-95 have both been really excellent sounding.


Correct - they have an ABT chip in there for video processing, which would only really be available for HDMI output. Rather than have a component output that missed all that, they've done HDMI only. If you upgrade, you might want to consider a device like HD Fury to let you start using HDMI for everything upstream of the TV. It will convert the HDMI to component just before your TV.


As far as I know, the Model 998 is still planned.

Last year I purchased the Marantz 5005 and I am using it as a pre-amp. I am generally satisfied except that the hdmi signal going out should be boosted as I have a long run to my overhead projector. Will the 978 have a boosted hdmi signal going out?

John

gonk the reason why I was commenting on 220/240vac was because I am in a country that has that power system, I'm neither in the US or Canada, given that I'm in Australia 220/240 vac is a requirement, the LAN option I put in for integration services, 9.x or 11.x would be nice to have...

the more inputs/outputs the better...

this is why I was saying they need to R&D look at what other Co's are doing aswell to see if they improve on what onkyo, marantz, denon, pionneer, hk and yamaha have done in the past..

the reason I requested more digital inputs because there is more pre-existing gear within my setup that requires these options...

the request within the video dept. was because s-video could be upscaled to 720i/p and component could be upscaled to 1080i/p, with atleast 1 composite connection..

not sure on front hdmi though looking at the current mockup on the rear of the unit it is a 5/2 configuration 6/2 or 7/2 would be a better choice, 4/1, 5/1, 5/2, 6/1 6/2 has been the bog standard for the last several years on the higher end avr's and processors... so 6/2-8/3 (rear) should be an option..

making the chassis a bit bigger also gives the room for expansion in later models, setting up a processor which has more in common with avr/processors of the early to mid 90's seems a bit silly to me, looking a the current layout is very under utilized..