Other than Mark Levinson, are there any pre/pros out there that are upgradable to discrete lossless DD and DTS 7.1 when those surround formats appear on high def DVDs late this year? As a McIntosh fan, I have grown weary of having to purchase a new pre/pro just to get HDMI (actually refused to do that one) or other incremental upgrade, but they cannot (or will not) engineer pre/pros that can be upgraded and will bring out a new pre/pro when HDMI 1.3 and lossless discrete DD and DTS 7.1 become available surround modes which causes the price of the previous pre/pro to drop to 50% on Audiogon and far less than that on trade-in at dealers.
I have googled and not been successful in finding any high end pre/pros that are designed either with a card cage (other than ML), OR being able to ship the pre/pro back to the factory for upgrading with new boards, firmware and software OR a guaranteed trade-up program. This taking a financial beating for each replacement McIntosh pre/pro is above my ability to gain the WAF and money to keep up. Theta was considered, but there is no indication that they can engineer an upgrade card to the lossless discrete 7.1 DD and DTS--but perhaps they can??
Solutions--suggestions??
MikeSp
