Call it "How not to be a Douche!"

Well I think you know I was sorta "joshing" as the Dell buyout was like a $24BILLION dollar announcement. And to be fair the Dell HW that my firm is having fits with is many years past its primary "full production" function but still a vital part of our development environment. Dell mostly does provide great service on new stuff and still helps us limp along as long we pay for extend support.

Funny thing too is that there are some analogies to the 975 product offering. See, back when my firm acquired this particular Dell HW and it was shiny new it was not real clear if the product offered more value than specialized units from other suppliers but it seemed awfully promising. The situation now is that we have a fancy "supposed to do everything" device that is kinda of limping along and gradually coming a giant costly decision point. I equate this to sorta maybe buying a used "does everything" kind of pre-pro like maybe an Integra 80.3 that cost, even used at a good discount, probably as much three or four 975s.

Part of me wants the "slices / dices / auto-eqs / internet connected / app friendly / wiz bang" of even a used pre-pro and another part of knows that WHEN something goes wrong no Integra dealer will even listen to my voice mail after they get to the "I bought it used" part.

Ideas? (feel free to PM too)

I had been tossing around several different a/v receivers such as the Onkyo tx-nr717 and nr-818 as their "specs" are similar to the 975/7125 combo I'll be getting soon. They too have tons of wiz-bang features that grabbed my attention, with TONS of HDMI options, yet even though I would be saving money with these vs. The Outlaw setup it was my wife that still brought me back to the Outlaw system. She said where was I going to get the same level of customer support and quality for my money, and that I had always bugged her about getting separates and this was my best chance for some time to come.

Agreed!! Now that you have the amp, upgrading is much easier down the road.

Well, renov8r, sometimes our companies need the latest and greatest, and sometimes the basics with accompanying easy of support, both internally and externally from suppliers. Your situation is probably either of those two regarding your Dell HW requirement.
As for your home electronics, I'd stick with Outlaw.

Pretty disappointed with this purchase of the 975. Will probably just hook my old 950 back up and buy the Emotiva or something else. Yes, I finally got it set up with using a high end HDMI to DVI cable and plugging the DVI end to my computer monitor. But there is absolutely no sound what so ever coming in thru the HDMI cables. So I cannot use the Dolby True HD or DTS Masters features on Blue-Ray disc. Cannot even use my superior OPPO decoding since there are no 7.1 input connections. Have been a long time Outlaw fan and consumer, but this unit is poor.

Well that stinks. Sorry to hear your unit doesn't seem to be working, Plonker. Did you give the Outlaws a call and see if they could help you troubleshoot it? Their support is usually top notch if you let them know there's a problem.

I assume the setup involved designating the HDMI ports for the equipment you have installed. I would recheck that and caqll Outlaw Monday AM.

Sure there is, but it's not coming through your DVI cable. You'll have the exact same problem with the Emotiva's HDMI output.

Plonker, please call customer service @ 1-866-Outlaws, after all of your posts, and suggestions from the community, it seems that the logical next step would be that you would speak to us directly.