Not to throw cold water on the 7.1 analog outputs but I think we may never see any players with it. My feeling is by the time we see 7.1 software the world will have moved to the HDMI interface.
On the one hand, receivers and processors have been shipping with 7.1 analog inputs for a couple years now just for this sort of situation, so I'd hope that at least some manufacturers (at least folks like Denon, perhaps) will recognize that. On the other hand, the sheer number of dubious decisions already associated with these two formats does lend weight to your theory.
I don't believe that the 990 can applying processing to the analog 7.1 inputs, although I'm not at home to check.
You are correct. As it stands now, the 7.1 direct input is independent from all surround processing. I'm not sure that this can be changed with a firmware update - it's very possible the hardware was designed in such a way that it is ruled out.
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