The compression used by MP3, AAC, and WMA to take WAV files (which take roughly 10MB per minute) and squeeze them down is based on intelligently discarding data forever. Hence the name "lossy" compression - it discards some of that original data before compressing what's left. The loss happens at the moment that the compressed file is created.

The 990's display is actually pretty large - I'm about 15 feet away from it right now (sitting at the desk in teh corner of our den) and can read "CABLE COA2" quite easily.