ok, Scott is right, turn off auto polling and the cut outs go away. Yes Optical will not give you true DVD-a but unfortunately you have to manually change the input, much like we used to do to choose 5 channel direct on the 1050's but a couple more steps now. But the wife isn't gonna do that and already gave me the whats up with that. So I'm glad that's cured. But I've got to figure out the lack of low end on the other formats. We got used to the 1050 adding some umph to normal TV viewing, but the first light on the S700 is barely flickering. Surely its me, others are raving, I'll get it soon.. Gave up for the night since family was coming over.

PS.. I had to upgrade firmware due to my DCT cablebox. Did anyone else have to do this?