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.

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

I cant make them, but chances are i can regas them.

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.

Mate.. thats ONE game.. WOZ. LCD can be any size you want it to be.. can be placed where you want it also. Theres no reason why it has to be the size of WOZ.. the one in your Iphone or Ipad is much smaller and also very very common... EASILY purchased. No reaon why the LCD cant be the same size and in the same position as your current DMD but graphics could be awesome.
LCD is cheaper than DMD now... too many components in DMD that all have to be integrated, each individually placed.
Had TAF, TZ,BSD etc had LCD instead of DMD then think of the imagery they could convey and just imagine what they would have done had they had this new technology.
The fact that Stern failed to introduce this is unfathomable.
WOZ is too large and the translite/ Backglass needs to come back with the LCD below... its a proven balance