yep, prob right Gav, not much has changed except that everything is slimmed down inside the backbox and under the playfield on BNIB of today machines.....

Now, 2 x very small boards replace 4 x large boards...wiring harness is apx half of the mass (or mess as it used to look like), everything is just minimsed and looks neater and tighter etc...making pins this way has become very efficient...

I personally love a good dot martix display with the new red led style compared to the old orange gas type...

Question - how else could u do a dot matrix display today if u dont use a led panel like Stern does....?  

I like the movement of the dot matrix and all the annimations and it can be easily seen when glancing up from the playfield..I would prefer if Stern used the larger DMD from the Sega games like Frankenstein or Batman Forever etc, but DMDs work very well..LCD is only the answer if u want movie stuff prior to hitting the start button, or if the game pauses, and the LCD plays a short clip, but during play it is too high to look up without losing the ball and its very big...so if u keep a led type DMD, except for making it bigger like the Sega one, and perhaps having it multi-coloured like the ones the other company is selling for Attack from mars and Medi-Evil Madness etc, what else could you do ?

*Also, only a very small amount of new Stern games (AC/DC LE) had a very small bell opto issue, and it was on less than 3 percent of LE machines...harly enough to stop Stern BNIB buyers to move away from buying BNIB.