Welcome to the forum, Houghers. I had a long reply mostly written when my browser decided it was Monday and crashed, so let's try this again...

As Prefect points out, there is the 30-day return policy as a method of auditioning the equipment in your own home. If the audition doesn't satisfy you, you're out the cost of shipping and the time spent playing with it (although for many of us around here, only the shipping would be seen as a "cost").

The 990 (and the 1070 receiver) has the software upgradeability primarily to allow for bug fixes, interface tweaks (such as some ideas that have been tossed out by 990 users and are apparently on Outlaw's list of planned revisions), and potentially even to facilitate changes that can wring that last bits of capability out of the hardware. Does that mean that the 990 will be able to handle Dolby Digital Plus and DTS-HD decoding internally? Probably not - for a very compelling reason. The digital audio connection that will be used for those two has not been agreed on. It will mostly likely be a form of HDMI, but it will be a newer version of HDMI than is currently in use, meaning that an HDMI input built into a processor today is likely to not be compatible with the HDMI outputs used by HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players. Does that mean we will be out of luck with HD optical discs? I don't believe so. In addition to the 990's DVI switching (which will handle the digital video signal from an HDMI source, since HDMI borrowed from DVI for the video half of its personality), the 990's 7.1 analog input will allow it to work with any player equipped with a built-in DD+/DTS-HD decoder. Since the output specs of the future HD optical disc players are not agreed on yet, we can't be 100% certain that this option will exist, but the sheer size of the installed home theater user base (far larger than existed when DVD arrived in 1997 with built-in Dobly Digital decoders on most early players) and the ability to restrict the digital audio signal to inside the player chassis (as the record labels required DVD-Audio and SACD to do for years) leads me to beleive that it is almost unavoidable.

If you find yourself really wanting to have a pre/pro with built-in decoding for DD+ and DTS-HD, then there is a rather roundabout upgrade solution that Prefect mentions: keep the amp you are about to buy, buy a new processor that offers the features that will eventually become available, and sell the 990 on a site like Audiogon to help pay for the new toy. It may not have as high a spouse acceptance factor as updating an existing component, but the cost after the proceeds from the sale of the 990 are factored in (assuming the replacement is priced similarly to the 990) would not be much different than the cost that Anthem AVM-20/30/D1 owners may face to upgrade their units to support HDMI later this year. A prime example of this is the number of 990 owners who helped fund their upgrades by selling 950's.

Lastly, I will commend you on your speakers - I run a somewhat lesser and older version of the same gear (in my case, Studio/60v2 mains, Studio/CCv2 center, and Studio/ADPv2 rear surrounds along with Axiom M3ti side surrounds and an Outlaw LFM-1 sub). Outlaw amps are very well regarded and have been very happily powering my Paradigms for several years now. I had a brief thought about suggesting that you consider supplementing the 7125's 125W/channel rating with a pair of M200's for the big Studio/100's (the combination would still come in under your $2500 budget), but it is probably not necessary. It occured to me because I have a pair of M200's driving my Studio/60's (made necessary in my case by a need for extra channels of amplification after a used stereo amp responsible for the rear surrounds retired itself). In the 7125's defense, however, I must remind myself that I had great luck driving my Studio/60's with my Model 750 amp (165W per channel) and even got pleasing results driving them with my old Model 1050 receiver (65W per channel) - the 7125 would be a nice improvement over the Denon's 110W of receiver amp. I think the combination would work quite well.