It's all guesswork from all of us (except the beta testers, who are bound to silence until the 950 ships), but I would expect to get better results from a pre/pro like the 950 for CD decoding, DD, and DTS decoding than from a DVD player. For one thing, the JVC won't do Dolby Digital EX or DTS ES (as you've noted, you don't have the speakers to benefit from this), but typically DVD player DACs are only sufficient -- not up to par with what a home theater pre/pro needs to have. Since you'll have the 5.1 analog connection in place, you'll have a chance to compare both options (let us know how it turns out if you do), but I'd plan on using the 950's brains for decoding for everything except DVD-Audio discs.

------------------
Gonk