The DMC-1 is more expensive than the 990 and has a few fewer features (less robust bass management, for example). Emotiva is now offering an outboard HDMI switcher that is similar to the 990's onboard DVI, although one thing I love about the 990's DVI switching is the ability to assign the DVI ports to any video input. In theory, you could have a device like the PS3 (HDMI and optical digital outputs) connected to the 990 and use Video5 (the front input) for it since both the DVI and the digital audio inputs are assignable. That can give you a bit more flexibility in setup. On the other hand, that bit of flexibility may not be needed by everyone...

There's also the fact that Emotiva support is somewhat in flux: AV123 brought the line to market almost as if it were an internal brand (which it never really was, although many people had that impression), but they have now broken that tie and Emotiva is on their own to handle customer support and sales. They may end up being very successful in that regard, but at this point there's not a proven track record to back them up whereas Outlaw's been online and in business since 1999.