My understanding is the Pioneer is also $1000 or near and supposedly has excellent audio at least as good as the 2900, if not the 5900. Video...I never trust Pioneer on the chroma bug, but this also is supposed to be fairly good. Remember it has HDMI out and upsampling to HD res. And the Firewire audio connection will work with the industry standards.

Don't get me wrong, I've got the 2900 and wouldn't trade it for the Pio, just thought I'd mention the option.