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but then when 1.3 comes out they will have to develop that so we end up paying twice the money for upgrades.
What exactly does 1.3 do that 1.1 can't? Deep color? From what source?

You want to pass the advanced codec bitstream instead of LPCM? Then I wouldn't worry about the costs, because that will be much more expensive than LPCM via HDMI 1.1. You'd need all the decoding done in the processor, which was pointed out before is not the best solution.

So there is really no advantage of using 1.3 over 1.1. Of course, once we get 1.3, there'll be 2.0 around the corner and you could wait again...

In the end, we all want to use the new lossless formats and we could have that now with 1.1. We'll get the exactly same results with 1.3 once that is ready, so there really is no point to wait.

Meridian should at least announce something, because right now it seems like that once so futureproof and modular 861 is a dead end. We're not that far away from High-End and I'm sure Ron will be there, so just like last year I'll bug him about HDMI, but I'll also let him know that I'll jump the ship if they don't do anything.

I'm sure they could upgrade the 800 with HD DVD, but that may not be the best solution. I love the format much more than BD, but with no new releases, the format isn't going anyway. BD on the other hand has lots of new releases. Most of them are crap movies, but that doesn't matter. I popped in Crank last weekend and it was a pain to sit through that movie. But at least with BD there's something to watch...

No matter what they do(HD DVD or BD), I think we'll see a new G-series player first, before they upgrade the 800.

- Stephan