Hi again all

Thank you for helping me on my (ultimately failed) jounrney to attempt to acquire an Elite 99. I'm currently looking at a CLD-D703 and an Elite CLD-95 and will almost certainly buy one of them. Depite the inflated price environment they're both within my range and I know this is probably about my last chance to grab one.

Does anyone have any insight on the PQ, quality-of-life and other important differences between these two?

Here's what I've gathered so far is:

• Picture Quality.
  • Best Overall PQ is 703-04 but Maybe a Matter of Preference. The D703-04 and elites based on them have more or less the cleanest, most detailed picture among the non-crazy/mainstream players, owing to variable settings for DNR and just good guts.
  • Subjective Differences in PQ. The 95 is regarded as putting out an excellent picture, just one that's on the softer, less grainy side, as opposed to the sharper and a bit grainier 7 series. Not sure if this is due to less aggressive digital DNR, the ability to bypass it, or just implementation differences (I'd bypass the DNR entirely if possible). Both give 51 db vSNR.
  • Role of the Chroma Filter. Not sure how much this difference matter when you use the composite out. Understand CLD-95 is a notch lesser than its 79/97/99 successors, but probably the biggest reason other than the more elaborate DNR filter is the improved 3D chroma filter for S-Video (which means nothing to me as I will be using composite only).
  • Better Digital Processing on the 703? Someone on some forum said the CLD-95 digital processing pipeline involves one more conversion of the video to digital and back before output - one more undesirable step (which might contribute to the softness), but this sounds intuitively dubious to me without further explanation, so I'm not sure how much this matters.
• Build Qulaity and Quiet. The CLD-95 is significantly quieter in operation due to better sound damping and overall higher quality parts. This is kind of a big deal for me because these things tend to run so loud. Also overall beefier build that might hold up over time a little better.
• Issues with 7x Side Flipper Mechanism. The 703-04 have a plastic gear involved in their Gamma turn system that tends to wear and may not be well suited for long life in a world without repair parts. The 95's alpha turn is supposedly a little slower but after seing a couple of YouTube videos of them in action I don't know that I'd ever notice the difference. Kurt Bahr mentioned this.
• Multibit Ladder vs D/S Stream DACs. The CLD-95 is among the last to use true multibit DACs, as opposed to the 1-bit D/S DACs in the later models. I know there's nothing wrong with the D/S DACs, but I kind of would welcome the chance to bring another multibit into the house. It's just something different/special (I enjoy the coloration of my standalone multibit Airist RDAC).

Also I know neither has AC-3 out, which I don't plan on ever using.

Anybody have any takes?