Actually, you are not losing the lip sync function - the 990 does that to the audio internally, even if you don't use it for video switching. And for your application, I don't see the 990's switching doing you any good: you have a single analog video source (the HD recorder) and a single digital video source (the 2910), so you would end up changing inputs on the TV anyway. If the HD recorder had a DVI or HDMI output, you could use the 990's DVI switching, but you'll still end up switching between the TV's HDMI input and the TV's internal tuner.