if i'm hooking up the new panny bd-50 with 7.1 analog cables to get DolbyHD or PCM, then i guess i'm using the Panny's DACs to convert the sound. Panasonic makes decent DACs?

So my question is, am i almost better off hooking up the panny with an optical cable, not getting the PCM or Dolby HD, and letting my 990 use its DACs and get the standard Dolby Digital or DTS. Which would sound better?

Yes, you would be using the Panasonic's DAC's for TrueHD and PCM. I have no idea what kind of quality the DAC's are in Panasonic's Blu-ray players, but based on my experiences with DVD-Audio and SACD I suspect that it'd at very least be worth connecting the 7.1 analog and comparing with traditional DD/DTS over optical - the benefits of lossless are likely to be significant, certainly enough so to justify the effort of making the comparison with a number of different discs.

The Denon website says that their upcoming $2k BD player: Hopefully a typo (the previous time I checked, they had cut and pasted the specs of their BD player on to the product page of their BD transport, leading some to believe that the transport would decode all the advanced audio codecs). In either case, the price and lack of profile 2.0 place it behind the Panny BD50 feature-wise. If it turns out that it can only bitstream DTS-HD MA and not decode it internally (as their product page suggests), then one wonders what you're getting for the princely sum of $2,000.

Interesting, Sanjay - your link certainly suggests that the Denon can't decode Master Audio internally, but this PDF mentions decoding TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio to multichannel PCM. Shame they can't get their facts straight about their own product. As you say, I wonder what their target market is. For the price they want for the 3800BD, you'd think that they could have at least tucked in DVD-A and SACD support.

Indeed, lack of SACD/DVD-A support is the most glaring ommision in a player at this price level. My Panny BD10A does DVD-A and the PS3 does SACD, so we know support for those formats is possible in a BD player. Thank goodness for my $149 Oppo.

When it comes to DTS-HD MA support, I'd rather believe your PDF than my quote from the Denon site. I guess we'll see when it finally comes out. The Panny BD50 still has the advantage when it comes to BD profile, at one third the price no less.

I'm still a 990 wannabe with limited equipment/experince. That said , I still think the dramatic diffrence between Dolby IIx in 7 channels and Dolby HD (from my 10a through the analog ports) and the amazing picture quality of blueray make it the best theater upgrade available for $400.