Good to hear from ya' Gonk. I sure am having fun. I wanted to stay out of the format wars for a bit longer, but the big price drop on the Panny with its' 7.1 outputs was too hard to resist. BTW. I only recently picked up some dts 96/24 discs(Genesis "Trick of the Tail for example) and I am impressed with the Panny/990 combo..My older Denon 1600 wasn't too shabby, but the Panny certainly beats it out in the SQ department. One thing for sure, I have always preferred the 5.1/7.1 direct inputs over the fiber optical when playing hi-rez audio tracks. I guess I prefer a more straight and pure analog path in this regard. The 990 sure kicks some butt! Now, this may be a old and tired question..but I've forgotten much..Tell me this, when I am using the 7.1 input path..the 990 still invokes "speaker setting" that I've set-up...i.e. those speakers that I've selected as large or small are still in play with the 7.1 input..Is that correct??? And crossover selection is still in play as well, eh? Setting the dvd player to all "large" and letting the 990 do its' thing seems to work best for me...
I know a lot of people worried about the 990 being non-hdmi back when..but I think it was and still is a prescient decision..only now are we seeing some hdmi implementation on products and I beleive it will still be awhile for across-the-board application..But I am here to tell all that the 990 can do at least the hi-def audio part in spades. And the 7.1 direct feature has proved to be a God-send! I'm sure when/if Outlaw does go the hdmi route in a pre-pro or receiver, they will do it right in the quality and bang-for-the-buck department..Since I never have used any receiver or the 990 for video switching, it's going to be a long time before I even think of giving up on the 990. Hail Outlaw!