The LMC-1 has not generated a huge amount of debate, especially around here (there's a good bit at AV123, although since Emotiva struck out on their own). The LMC-1 uses almost exactly the same DAC's as the Model 970 (in fact, the 970 has a version with about 4dB more headroom), and Outlaw's said on more than one occasion that the 990's DAC's are a solid step up. The 990 offers all of the same features as the LMC-1 (as can be seen in my comparison chart ) including analog video transcoding (composite and s-video are available at the component output, although the DVI switching is independent), plus it has some advantages. The ones that spring to mind are addressable digital audio inputs, addressable component video inputs, addressable DVI inputs, software updates via USB or RS-232, phono input, auto calibration, and stereo analog bypass. One other thing that may factor in is support - Outlaw's pretty well stamped out bugs in the 990 but still have an easy avenue for upgrades to fix problems or add things via firmware update, but I've seen indications at AV123 that there are still bugs in the LMC-1 and this post suggests that there are no firmware updates in the pipeline (hassle of having updates installed notwithstanding).

If you bought this time last year, then you would have gotten one of the pre-orders - have you gotten the PLII fix installed?