Wingnut,

Not to be rude...but there is no comparison between the AVP7 (exact clone of the P965 as far as I know) and the AVM30. The Anthem is simply incredible. If I had to give a percentage of the AVM30's sound quality performance achieved by the AVP7, I would say the AVP7 gives about 65% of the AVM30's performance on movies and about 60% on audio. Details are abundant with the Anthem and and bass is integrated excellently.

Feature-wise there is also no comparison. The AVM30 has things like channel levels memorized by each surround mode, THX processing(highly adjustable as well), you can set the decoding mode for each type of surround format on every different source input, menu is accessable via OSD and the front panel of the unit, two separate speaker configs (one for movies, one for music), etc.

The downside is the cost of the unit compared to the 990, AVP7, P965, etc.


Laventura,

The video switching capabilities are another downside of the AVM30 right now. However, for MY setup the only DVI/HDMI source I have is the Oppo971 and it is connected directly to my SP4805 projector. Everything else is fed via component or S-video (Laserdisc is still hanging in there) and ran through the Anthem.

Anthem is still working on the upgrade for the AVM30 to an AVM50 and thinks they will have it completed in the next 6 months or so. I believe the only major differences between the AVM50 (or upgraded AVM30) and the D2 is that the D2 has upsampling for all channels, DTS 24/96, and dual DSP engines. The cost of the upgrade should be around $1700 (the original price difference between buying the AVM30 or AVM50). It's definately not cheap.

I am wondering how the Gennum scaler in the upgrade would do with the component and S-video from all my sources. From what I have heard and read about the Gennum scaler, probably pretty darn good.

I'm in no hurry though for the upgrade as I need to recover from the AVM30 purchase and don't have more than one source to connect via HDMI right now anyhow.