After a lot of thinking, I've decided to ditch the AV amp and extra speakers. Me, I'm going back to purely stereo for movies also. For years I've run an AV system, firstly with an add on dolby pro-logic processor (that was back in 94') and I'm now on my second Dolby Dig AV amp, both of which used front pre-outs to my stereo. One of the things that has struck me is simply just how rubbish most AV amps sound, particularly their pre-amp sections. I think the best av pre-amp I've ever heard was a Naim AV2, which was miles better than most, yet still no better than my old Nait 5 as a stereo pre-amp (and that's a Nait 5 without a hicap). Having made it to a better stereo pre-amp now, and during av, I can't help but notice that the AV side of things is starting to sound pretty ropey when compared to the stereo side of things. The worst thing about it is that I know that to deal with it would be either enourmously expensive or possibly impossible as I think I'd be wanting something better than a Naim AV2, and I doubt there's much out there under 5k that would fit the bill. So in future I think I'll simply run a DVD player directly into the naim pre-amp and have stereo AV. Now, my only real question is whether an external DAC would do a good job on films (e.g. a meridian 203, which I've owned before, but never tried with films). Any ideas?