Jason:

My experience with 6 active speakers and the 1050 in 6.1 mode is different from yours.

Potentially this may be due to my not tuning the relative volumes of the various speakers correctly before doing the testing. I also had the rear surround speaker located directly behind my head (slightly above ear level) when testing. Another potential cause(although Scott at Outlaw has denied this), is that there are different versions of the 1050 firmware that react differently to the DD5.1EX signal.

In any, I seem to get a significant amount of surround sound out of the 1050 while playing HP COS in 6.1 mode. One scene in particular that jumped out was when Harry and Ron were flying the car to Hogwarts and the Train came up on them. The train appeared directly behind me. I also remember one scene (also with the car) where it seemed to be flying across the rear of the room.

My frustration arises from the fact that I have been unable to find a single reference to other equipment having problems with these DVDs (other that some statements in this thread about Onkyo equipment having the problem several years ago). As an example, my cousin's 5 or more year old Yamaha receiver (which is only a 5 channel device) plays these DVDs just fine in 5.1 mode.

This brings us to the final point of your letter. You are not expecting anything from Outlaw and site the cost. However, I purchased the unit with the expectation that it could correctly playback all Dolby 5.1EX encoded disks. I would not have purchased it otherwise. This is still my expecatation given that Outlaw still advertises on its website that the 1050 is "100-percent compatible with all Dolby Surround EX 6.1-channel theatrical soundtracks". While I am willing to allow that this may require the use of 6 speakers, I don't believe the cost of the 1050 has anything to do with this reasonable expectation.