I have been giving Meridian's responses a good deal of thought and have come to the conclusion that Meridian is doing us a huge favor in producing the HDMI Box. The HDMI Box in essence allows Meridian's users to use third party disc spinners (CD, SACD, DVD-A, DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray) with its surround sound processors using a purely digital path. One strategy they could have pursued would have been to simply introduce 8XX and G9X Blu-ray players with MHR digital and analog outputs. If you wanted the lossless codecs without going through an extra D/A - A/D stage (i.e, the best), you would just have to pony up for a Meridian Blu-ray player. Given that Meridian's view expressed in its comments is that Blu-ray is going to make it as a commercially viable optical disc format, Meridian Blu-ray players are all but inevitable. Perhaps they will introduce them at CEDIA and accomplish their goal "to end 2008 in the same spectacular fashion that it started (when it released 808.2 and the DSP7200 loudspeaker).” Meridian, my hat is off to you.

561, DSP5500s, DSP5000C, analog sides and rears