OK, time to get serious (relatively speaking).

Let's start with what I didn't like. It's a short list and there's nothing terribly earth shattering about it.

1. Didn't care for the FM antenna connection. The slip-on connect over the bulkhead pin seems kind weak to me. Granted, it's hidden in back an likely never to be bumped but overall I didn't care for it. I kept my 970 FM antenna and used the provided adapter.

2. It would have been nice to have the same power cord as the 970. The different form factor required me to pull out the old power cable and thread the new one behind the rack. Kinda nit-picky but there it is.

3. The tactile feedback on the volume knob is bad (IMO). The knob is pretty stiff to turn and the knob itself is very slippery. At times I was unsure if I was actually turning the knob or if my fingers were just slipping on the surface. Turned out to be both on different occassions.

4. It would have been nice to have a power port for the OAW3, or better yet a docking station for the OAW3. That's more an observation than a dislike. Just thought it would be cool.

Now for some of the rest:

1. The small size and back panel layout caused some concern about the ease of hooking up the ins and outs. Turned out to be a piece of cake. The 970 was jammed into the space I had and I actually had to use a mirror tocheck soem of the connects. The 975 was swimming in space and I had plenty of room to work.

2. My circa 1990 CD player only has analog outputs. I hooked it up and threw in a Beethoven piano concerto ("Hunt" on the Telarc disk). I then threw the same disk in my Panasonic Bluray play to see how it sounded completely digital. It actually came out about 6-10 dB lower in volume out of the Bluray. When corrected for volume I thought it sounded pretty much the same.

3. The boy wanted to play Xbox (of course). In fact he's playing now which is why I have time to type inmy thoughts. MW3 was a real treat with the bombers and fighters panning across various speakers depending on which direction the bomb run came from. The point being that the balance of the multi-channel info seems to blend more seemlessly than the 970. The sound stage also seems a bit wider than it was with the 970.

4. The video scaling is done really well. I used The Avengers to test out the system. Why? Because the movie came with both DVD and Bluray copies. This let me run DVD, upscaled DVD (by the Panasonic), Bluray and downsampled Bluray (again by the panasonic) and compare results. I was also able to compare the Panasonic direct to the TV with the 975 in between the two. To evaluate the performnace I didn;t even watch the movie. The entry screen has a line drawing of the SHIELD aircraft carrier. The diagonal lines clearly show sampling effect. Then after the comic screens flip by the MARVEL name appears and fades into the distance on a red background. Looking at the legs of the V you can clearly see the aliasing effect causing a ripple going down the edges of the left leg and then back up the edges of the right leg of the V. Obviously giving the 975 full res Bluray and letting it output it to the TV was best. However the native 480P out of the DVD upscaled by the 975 was pretty close picture-wise. However the sound quality of the DVD vs the Bluray was no contest.

5. I actually thought the the small controller is pretty cool. I didn't have a problem with the small size of the key, although I'm guessing it will find it's way into the couch pretty easily.

Enough for now. Time to kick the boy off the system. It's dad's turn.