Congrats. Enjoy a movie or two for me -- for some reason, my system has been pretty adamant about not turning on until MLGW restores power to the neighborhood. Equally bad, the air conditioner is in on the conspiracy, too. Lousy 60+MPH straight-line winds...

Since you do not have surround back speakers, the DD-EX, DTS-ES, and CES modes will not be available, as you had already guessed. That's normal.

I haven't used a satellite box with the 950, but the 950 will only allow you to select a surround mode if the active source is compatible with it. If you have a DD signal from the satellite box and select DD, the next time you get a PCM signal it will switch to PLII I believe. If your satellite box is like some digital cable boxes, it will not provide a digital audio signal for stations that don't broadcast in DD -- in which case, having the 950 set to the digital input will give you exactly nothing (it won't switch to analog when the digital input is inactive). I don't think satellite boxes are as bad about that as digital cable boxes, but it might be a useful tidbit for you.

I believe that RAF (one of the 950 beta testers) replaced a few Marantz MA500's with a 755 and found it to be a pretty comparable setup in his system.

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