I recently purchased an 861 V2.81 on eBay. It was damaged in shipping and in the course of talking to the shipping company and Meridian in Atlanta, I was considering repair/upgrade simultaneously (serial #100294).

I delivered the unit directly to the repair facility in Atlanta. The quoted fee for the upgrade was $5390. This price is almost $900 higher than the dealer quoted meridian506. It appears that his dealer was actually willing to take less than the MSRP suggested by Meridian.

Anyway, my final decision was to let the delivery company "total" the processor and let me recoup my costs.

G68ADV, DSP5500's, DSP5500HC, DSP5000's, Sony Ruby, DVDO, VP-30