Monitors with greater resulution than 1080p has bean here for a while, when i bught my pc more than 2 years ago there was quality ips monotors with 2560*1600 and 2560*1440 to buy, since my budget already was tight i got a low quality 1080p tn monitor(mistake). Bluray sacd dvd etc is getting outdated as well. Most pc:s today can play 1080p and beyound. Instead of getting expensive bluray players people will get htpc:s. Streaming and electronic selling is taking over. Lossless streaming and even streaming in 24 bit 96 khz is here http://www.sixmoons.com/audioreviews/qobuz/1.html

I don't know about any affordible 4k monitors but a am sure it will come. I am sure movies with good resulution(1080p isn't) will be more common. The biggest problem with todays movies is the compression. I have spend some time making videos and the size for raw uncompressed fraps files is huge. I made a uncompressed 1 hour long video in sony vegas pro one time but there was a problem, the size was several hundred GB. I doubt video processing for low quality bluray films matters really. Quality upscaling and processing matters for gaming. Ps3 and xbox 360 has a actual res of 640p(mostly). Wii has 480p and wii u will feature true 1080p. Pc gaming is a differwnt story. Multi monitor setup is pretty common, one setup was one 2560*1600 monitors and 2 with 1600*something.

Fun reading:
http://xkcd.com/732/
http://hometheaterreview.com/youtube-offers-4k-video-streaming/

anjora, equipment at the resolutions you're discussing will be too expensive for most people for quite some time. Also, there's the movie studio issue.

beyond 1000's comments are relevant.

Hank:

I don't think you are correct about the price points for 4K type monitors. Its pretty easy to find 24" PC monitors that do 1920x1200 for under $600. Using a single 50" sheet would give you enough pixels to do all of the 4K resolutions. Even allowing for extra manufacturing costs and more expensive electronics (to upsize/interpolate 1920x1080), one could probably see this in the $3-4K price range. I don't know if you have seen a 4K picture, but it is pretty stunning (I saw a 4K demo using a clip from the Sound of Music at UCSB - it was the Do-Re-Me hill top scene and you could see the individual blades of grass)

I do think that you are correct about the movie studio issue at least in the short term. Longer term, I would expect that their desire resell 4K versions of their film libraries will lead to a solution.

We won't likely see another TV format for 10+ years. It took HD at least 20 years to catch on, and even though nearly every product you buy today supports it, I still see most consumers playing back non-HD content. While I'm a techie, none of my friends are - and none of them knows even how to set up an HD source properly. I can't count how many times I've had to fix incorrect aspect ratios on their systems - I can't watch anything on a TV unless it's in the correct aspect.

So there's a solid reason for not worrying about formats that won't be around for a while. But, IMO, there's also reason to dump older technologies. IMO having a phono stage makes absolutely no sense at all on this kind of product. If someone is serious about phono, then they're better served with a dedicated phono and 100% pure analog pre-amp.

While the 978's backplane looks a lot cleaner than many other products in this segment, there's still room for simplification. Just make sure the balanced connections remain. I can't imagine spending any amount of money on a pre-pro that didn't have balanced connections, so I'm glad to see the Outlaws have included them with the 978.

73Bruin: $3 - $4k is an astronomical price for a 50" display - wow.

twistybox: I agree with your first paragraph, and given 73Bruin's cost estimate of a 4k 50" TV/monitor, adoption of that amongst consumers would take a L O N G time. The majority of consumers are happy with 720p. 1080p is still a party for them. We must remember that us audio/video nuts are a small minority.
I also agree with leaving out the phono input on the 978. Take $50 off the my cost and delete it.

I put $2350 into my Parasound Halo JC-3 phono stage. Granted, that's probably more than a lot of (most?) vinyl lovers are going to pay for their phono stage, but I don't know anyone with a turntable valued at more than $500 who's running it into a phono input on a receiver or a pre-pro. They've got a dedicated separate phono stage device of some sort.

So by all means, delete the phono input that's not going to be used anyway, and save the money.

But this is all irrelevant chatter, isn't it? Isn't the consensus here that the hardware is set, and it's got what's being described as an "audiophile-level phono input?"

Streaming content on the Internet, specially at 1080P, is highly compressed and won't touch the quality for the same movie on a Blu-ray disc. Digital video technology allows Internet streaming providers to compress the picture to make it less demanding on bandwidth, but boy do you loose on PQ! This is the same situation we saw with the DVD versus satellite TV or the digital cable TV era all over again, the resolutions may have been the same but the PQ sucked compared to DVD, big time!

A friend of mine uses a HTPC to watch Blu-rays and my Oppo BDP-83 or any other BD player simply puts his HTPC to shame on his 55-inch Samsung LCD HDTV. I don't know of any HTPCs that are cheaper than a very good quality $200 Blu-ray player that can also stream all kinds of services through the Internet and DLNA.

Since when did SACD get outdated? Have you ever listened to a good quality hi-res SACD, DVD-Audio or Blu-ray Audio recording on a decent or good quality stereo or multichannel system? New SACD releases are coming out every week. Up to date, there have been over 7800 titles released on SACD, up from around 7000 one year ago. This market for audiophiles is far from dead. I've yet to see any multichannel high resolution audio download or streaming service, they're all stereo.

A computer monitor and an HDTV are two different display devices targeting different needs. When you work on a computer monitor, ideally you'd like to have the largest possible resolution (within reason) as this gives you a larger virtual desktop upon which you can open and display more documents simultaneously to work more efficiently and increase productivity, specially on a modern multitasking OS environment. Furthermore, you sit very close to a computer display allowing your eyes to resolve the finer details that a larger resolution like 2560x1600 or greater yields.

However when watching TV, normal people prefer watching at much greater viewing distances than when looking at a computer display as they relax comfortably on their sofas. Studies have shown that the average HDTV viewing distance in US homes is about 9 feet (2.74 meters). The human eye for 20/20 visual acuity can resolve details in the order of 1/60th of a degree (or 1 arc-minute). At that 9-foot viewing distance, the optimum screen size for a 1080P HDTV is 69 inches, smaller than that and you gradually begin to loose details as your screen size decreases. Other studies point out that most consumers buy HDTVs that are too small in size for their eyes to be capable to resolve all the detail shown by the 1080P HDTV they purchase because their viewing distance is too far with respect to the screen size at a 1920x1080 resolution.

When you move onto 4K (4096x2160P) territory, the issue is further compounded. At that resolution and when watching from 9 feet away, your eyes begin to see the benefits of 4K at about 83 inches in screen size and only realize the full potential at around 144 inches, i.e. a 12-foot screen size! At this point, you might as well get yourself a projector. Most consumers don't have the room and available wall space to accommodate a projector, that's why consumers buy mostly screen sizes in the 55-inch category. Watching a 55-inch 4K display at 9 feet won't add much to your viewing pleasure other than that provided by the increased color space that is used in 4K displays. No doubt 4K screens are on their way, some are already available in the form of projectors and some LCDs may come out by year's end, but until the prices drop down significantly for very large displays, the benefits will be marginal, unless you sit like 5 feet away.

As for 4K video content, I can guarantee you that this content will be available on physical media before streaming services. A consortium of Japanese companies has developed the Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) that can support capacities of several terabytes. We don't even know yet if the movie studios will go along as they're very paranoid about the possibility of having their very high resolution content like 4K being pirated. It's difficult enough to stream 1080P content properly with it's bandwidth requirements and for consumers to have affordable bandwidth to support it. Now imagine the demands for 4K that will be over 4 times greater.

One last comment, if you were to argue that DVD's resolution isn't adequate, I think that's a very defendable viewpoint. However, you state that 1080P isn't good resolution when it actually has 6 times more resolution than DVD. I find this a very narrow-minded and jaded opinion. Have you ever seen a well mastered 1080P Blu-ray movie on a quality display like a Pioneer Kuro, a good quality plasma or any good quality LCD screen? I suspect that you've being watching compressed streamed 1080P content on a small low quality LCD screen or computer display. Resolution isn't the only criterion for PQ and in the calibration industry, it's considered to be less important than certain others. ISF for instance considers that the most important criteria for picture quality are - in the following order - the contrast ratio, the color saturation, the color accuracy, resolution, followed by others. So there are three other aspects of PQ that are deemed to be more important than resolution in regards to PQ.

No lets by all means redesign the 978. That way it stays vaporware and we never have to know how it performs. Those of us who have waited for 3 plus years to see this thing remember when Outlaw asked what features we would want and the PHONO stage was one of the highlights. Don't believe that the 978 is some newly designed device that only caters to the newest formats. It was designed for sound all the way around and for those of us with large record collections that phono stage is a must. Most here don't have very expensive turntables but if we did I doubt we would spend big $$$ for a separate phono stage that cost more than the 978.

Agreed, let's be done with it and bring it out already! It has been too long of a wait. Anyway, these things are always going to get outdated at some point in the future.

As i wrote earlier i am not interested in watching movies. You are correct about the bandwidth issue with high resulition video. I agree that 1080p is enough for movies, but i use my pc for other things. Video streaming will get better by time.

As for dvd-audio and sacd:
The main benefit from going from cd quality is the mastering quality. I was able to hear differense between 24 bit 48 khz and 24 bit 44.1 khz in blind test but i hear up to about 48khz so it's not really suprising. I have read some info about sacd and the conclusion is that cd is technically superior sacd (and vinyl as well) the reason 90%+ of all cd:s sound crap is becuase of loudness war. The only reason for sony starded with sacd was to prevent poeple to copy it illegaly.