Hey Jake, I have heard about the S77, but I believe the S97 has some more bells and whistles. It is also the one that is the most talked about on AVSforum and other sites. From memory here are what I think are some of the differences:

s97 has DVD-Audio
s97 has MPEG noise reduction
s97 has Dolby Surround PLII

Other than that, I believe they are very similar. Maybe Nickbuol will jump in here, he did a lot of research before buying his s97 for his Sanyo Z3.

Randy




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