With your HDMI board dead in the 906, aren't you going to have to run HDMI to the TV and multichannel analog to the 906?

This is a good solution for a few reasons. First, the BDP-93 has a very respectable analog section, not to mention support for almost every optical disc format you can find. Second, it gives you a player that can be used later with a different surround processor.


It's an extra $500. Granted, I adore my BDP-95, so I can't call this a bad choice in any way. Once you replace the 906 with something new (like a Model 978), you may not continue to use the BDP-95's analog output - with the 978 in particular, I'd think you'd likely prefer to switch to HDMI audio since the 978 is also using an analog section based on ESS chips. At that point, you'll be leaving a fancy and expensive analog section unused.


If the Model 978 were available today, I'd certainly do this. With the Model 978 still in development, you have to be willing to stay with the 906/Samsung combo for a while longer.


There's a hybrid solution, of course: sell the Samsung to help fund a BDP-93, then later sell the 906 to help fund a Model 978. The move to a BDP-93 would give you sound that's equal to or better than the 906 gave you when the HDMI board worked (based on experience I've had with an Onkyo 885 - processor cousin to the 906's predecessor, the 905 - and both the BDP-83 and the BDP-93), and the BDP-93 would still be a good partner for the Model 978 via HDMI later.


The video processing doesn't scale up to 4k, which is OK since no commercial displays work with 4k. (4K resolution is 4096 by 3072 pixels.) The processing does provide output up to 1080p (1920x1080). That is the resolution that Blu-ray uses, as well, so the processing benefits for Blu-ray are limited - mainly the benefit is coordination with displays that run at lower resolutions, since the player or processor uses a video processing chip that is better than most TV's include and thus can more gracefully scale down. The biggest benefit is for DVD's, though, which must be both deinterlaced and scaled.


We don't know what the Model 978 will sound like, so we can't make any definitive comments about benefits relative to existing hardware.