This is a great thread and I would like to add just a bit of clarity if I might. First, the observation that the cat stoves burn dirty and stuff can go out the chimney when the cat fails is accurate. However, for the better part of a decade (average lifespan in our products and we now have a 10 year warranty on our cats) 100% of VOC's are destroyed when the cat is above 550F. As well, about 65% of methane is also destroyed. As a manufacturer of both current technologies, I can assure you that is not the case for non catalytic models.
As for moisture levels in fuel, lab studies have shown that hardwoods burn dirtier than soft woods, both cord wood and pellet. Also, hard woods do take longer to season (dry out) than soft woods. Additionally, any manufacturers lurking about in this forum can coo berate the fact that the first hour of combustion sees the greatest reduction in fuel weight as a result of water being boiled out of the fuel. So if you burn your stove, cat or non cat for an hour or so on a high burn setting and then shut it down for the day or evening, you can mitigate most of the issues surrounding moisture in fuel. I say most because regardless of combustion technology, moisture in fuel results in dirtier emissions so we should all endeavor to burn as dry a fuel as possible.
Are you familiar with the term cold starts? EPA has coined this phrase and is looking for data relating to emissions during the restarting or refueling of a cold wood stove. Factually, some of the cleanest burning non catalytic wood stoves can take up to 45 minutes to reach clean burning status. Once all the mass is up to temperature, the stoves burn exceptionally clean. The problem of course is they are relit much more often than a large catalytic wood stove. As for reaching clean burning status in catalytic stoves, once the cat gets above 550 clean burning has begun and we have seen this happen in as little as 9 minutes with specific substrate materials.
As far as heat output, boy marketing guys are good! Fact, the EPA says there are 8,600 Btu's in a pound of hardwood fuel. Regardless of whether it is 8,600 or 9,000, just remember it is limited. So when you are shopping for a new stove, just look at the total amount of weight in pounds the stove can hold with fuel at 20% moisture content ( a nice round average although not ideal). If a stove will hold 50 lbs. of wood at 20%, then it has a maximum total Btu production of 430,000 Btu's from that load. As manufacturers we can't fudge that number.
Then locate a brochure for the stove from prior to 2008 (when the Fed. Tax Credit allowed nearly every stove to be eligible for the tax credit) and get the HHV (high heat value) efficiency for the stoves. Most were around 78% on the brochures for the LHV, so just subtract 10-11% and you'll get the HHV value.
Back to the example above, so the stove has 430,000 Btu's in the load and has a HHV (real world) efficiency of 68%. That leaves 292,400 Btu's to actually heat your home. Divide that by burn time and you can easily get the average heat output of the stove. If a stove has a low burn time of 10 hours, that 29,240 Btu's per hour in your home. If the high burn times is 5 hours, you get 58,480 Btus's AVERAGE into your home.
All the rest is marketing.