I can't compare the 970 to the 950 (although I will readily tell you about the joys of upgrading from the 950 to a 990). The reasoning for releasing the 970, however was mainly a matter of retiring an older model for a newer one. The 950 was released in 2002, and its feature set was starting to reflect its age when the 990 arrived last year (at which point they discontinued the 950). The 1070 gave them a platform with essentially all of the strengths of the 950 plus features that the 950 lacked: a 7.1 analog input instead of 5.1, a true analog bypass for the 7.1 input, DVI switching, video transcoding from s-video and composite to component, a third component input, Pro Logic IIx processing, a headphone jack with Dolby Headphone processing, AV sync control, and some other setup improvements like individual distance settings for all eight channels.