Too bad Outlaw didn't wait for at least the final audio specs. for both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. They are practically IDENTICAL, except for additional uncompressed stereo and discrete multi-channel LPCM support for Blu-Ray due to its higher capacity and higher bitrates.

As far as I know all new packeted codecs and LPCM specs. are pegged at 6 discrete channels @ 24/192 resolution and 8 discrete channels @ 24/96 resolution due to restrictions in today's HDMI specs.

Here they are (as best as I can remember):

Legacy Dolby Digital & DD EX

Dolby ProLogic, Dolby ProLogic II, and Dolby ProLogic IIx (although, these Dolby products are all DSP modes added after the fact and not necessarily apart of the original sound mixing or raw PCM data stream and are optional)

Dolby Digital Plus (more efficient lossy codec for broadcast and internet sources, mainly)

Dolby Digital Lossless (formally known as Meridian Lossless Packing or MLP)

Legacy DTS

DTS-HD (which encorporates DTS Neo:6, DTS-ES, DTS 96/24, and DTS Lossless; they can also tag legacy DTS lossy to the DTS Lossless stream as one giant bitstream for backwards compatibility if the software provider doesn't do two separate lossy and lossless tracks)

PCM

It remains to be seen if DSD support will be added to the Blu-Ray spec. because of Sony & Philip's involvement.

All signs (and by signs I mean Richard Doherty of Panasonic: a big figure in the Blu-Ray camp and others, like Amir from Microsoft, in the know; they hang out on AVS Forum quite a bit) point towards... drum roll please... HDCP encrypted HDMI along with some form of hardy key encryption set forth by the AACS as being the digital interface standard, not DVI/HDCP (although it may be okayed for video only so that devices with DVI/HDCP won't be totally obsoleted) or Firewire. HDMI will carry both audio and video, so all those new fancy, schmancy audio formats will probably have to travel on HDMI according to the dictates of the MPAA.

Does the Outlaw 990 have daughter card support for adding HDMI inputs and outputs to its main board? And does it have the extra space and horsepower to add these new formats and evil, yet necessary encryption standards?

I have a feeling I'm going to have to sit this one out, as much as I am intrigued by the 990, until full Blu-Ray and HD-DVD A/V support is included in receivers and pre-amp/processors.

The 990 will be quickly made obsolete I fear, and within a year or less because of the lack of high resolution disc support. Although, I'm sure it won't be the only unit.