I've been reading up on Dolby PLIIz lately. I know the 997 is slated to have Dolby PLIIx. Would it be possible for Outlaw to offer Dolby PLIIz as a firmware update down the line? The 997 has 7.1 output for zone one... but there is also zone 3 outputs... couldn't they be redirected as front height speakers? I don't see why they couldn't do that down the line. By the time this is released I bet other products will already be released with Dolby PLIIz. Also adding Dolby Volume (either out of the box or as a firmware update) would be a good way to keep this pre/pro from becoming obsolete too quickly. These features would help differentiate it from the Sherwood Newcastle R-972. Just a thought.

If Dolby PLIIz takes off in the marketplace... I bet the Trinnov software could be tweaked to account for the extra two channels, too. This would of course take time, but I doubt Dolby PLIIz would be offered out of the box anyways.

Check out this thread - we've been discussing this recently. We don't know enough yet to theorize with any sort of accuracy, though.

It's possible (based on the 990's design) that zone 2 and zone 3 are purely analog pre-amps, in which case it doesn't seem possible that the 997 could offer a 9.1 setup. It seems more plausible that PLIIz could be implemented so that users could choose from either a 7.1 setup with rear surrounds or a 7.1 setup that offered the standard 5.1 plus the two height channels (using the rear surround pre-amp outputs). That's pure speculation, though.

At this point, I think the one thing we can safely say is that there's about a 99.92% chance that PLIIz will not be part of the feature list when the 997 launches.

Thanks!