1) Absolutely. Every 950 shipped from Outlaw after December 17, 2002 include the "blue dot" revisions, and every 950 shipped after March 17, 2003 include the DTS-ES fix. Any unit you order from Outlaw will be up to date.

2) I've done the same thing with my DVD player for some time, and have a simple solution. The DVD input on the 950 always operates in some form of surround mode, but the CD input (which uses the same digital audio input as the DVD input) is permanently assigned to stereo.

3) Not from my experience. I lose the first moment of audio in most DVD menus, but I've never wept over that loss. Once the 950 acquires the PCM audio from a CD, it keeps it as long as the CD player isn't stopped, and I never seem to notice that lock at the start of the CD.

4) The 3805's rating is 120W/channel at 8 ohms, which is not very far removed from the 7100's 100W/channel. I don't know about S&V reviews, but over the years there have been a number of reviews of Outlaw amps (from the Model 750 that I use to the 7100, and everything in between) and Outlaw's amps have been consistently well regarded. I'd expect it to at least match and very possibly exceed the 3805's amp section.

5) The 950's bass management is pretty robust. Since you are using your DVD changer's digital output for CD playback, that will leave you in the digital domain for your stereo listening - which simplifies the discussion significantly. In that scenario, the bass management behaves exactly the same as it does for any other surround mode. We could also get into the subject of bass management while in stereo bypass mode (where the stereo analog signal is passed through without processing, but a digital copy is processed to generate a signal for the sub) or the analog crossover for the six-channel analog input, but we'll leave that alone.

Hope that helps.

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