renov8r: Your statement implies that the USB feed will go to the unspecified ESS Sabre DAC that is promised to be in the 978. This is by no means certain. The RR2150 has a USB chip that in addition to providing all of the USB handholding also does the conversion to analog. It is quite possible that same chip could be used in the 978.

One of my frustrations with the Outlaw statements about the 978 is that a lot of information about the quality of the chips used is not stated. For example there are 4 distinct lines of ESS DAC chips; I have seen some statements that imply it would be the Ultra chip and not the two chip reference series used in the Oppo BDP-95, but there is no official mention of this on the product page. Similarly the product page mentions Anchor Bay scaling but leaves out all mention of which chip set will be used. Considering that ABT was purchased by Silicon Image just over a year ago, I can see this being somewhat uncertain, but the product page only mentions video scaling and makes no mention of the other video processing capabilites that were offered by what are now "obsolete" ABT chips