THX Surround EX is only available if the receiver or pre/pro is THX certified (which from what I understand tends to dictate a lot of the design decisions and adds cost for licensing / testing thru THX); the THX EX decoding is based on DD EX (THX has licensed Dolby EX, which was developed jointly by Dolby and THX). With Dolby offering their EX decoding, it allows non-THX systems to do what appears to me to be essentially the same thing as THX Surround EX without going through THX. Check out this article at DVDFile.com for details on THX EX and Dolby Digital EX -- it makes a little more sense than my slightly fragmented explanation. Here's another article on the topic of THX EX.

While I am as disappointed as anybody else at the delay in getting my hands on a 950, I do think that it is impressive that Outlaw is going to be able to tuck DD EX into the 950 before it ships and still hope to get it here in time for Christmas. The 950's taken a while to get to market, but if you are chomping at the bit for one, take a minute to compare the current specs to the specs when it was originally announced. Originally it was going to include a one-channel amp for the center surround channel, would essentially re-use the 1050's guts, and would add (1) coax digital input, on-screen displays, and component video switching. Now it has all this plus Dolby Digital EX. Makes the wait worth it, I think.

[This message has been edited by gonk (edited November 05, 2001).]