The Outlaws were probably shocked on Jan 3 when TooManyHobbies put out his guess. How does the VUDU XL output to the 990? The product page has no Gallery shots of it so it's hard to judge what we would need to have in our systems to accomodate it. It may be perfect for the 997 with it HDMI inputs but not so great with DVI.

The rear panel shot shows optical and coaxial audio outputs and HDMI, component, composite, and s-video outputs. An HDMI-to-DVI cable and a digital audio cable would work just fine into the 990 - no more difficult than an HDMI DVD player or cable/satellite box.

Oh, and this link will give you a rear panel shot of the VUDU XL.

Not to spoil the party, but hey what about the exciting stuff?

Give them time...it is only January!

This is exactly why Outlaw has a no announcement policy.
I will be a good boy.

I have to admit VUDU does sound good. No more Friday and Saturday night trips to the video store, only to find all the movies you want to rent are all rented out. However, I do have a question concerning VUDU. Does anyone know what features you get with XL, that do not come with the basic VUDU package? I know XL has a considerably greater amount of storage space, than the basic VUDU. Are there any other advantages that XL has over the basic, other than the ability to store more content? Also, in these depressed economic times- what happens if VUDU goes bankrupt?

Based on Outlaw's original announcement, I see this tidbit:
It sounds like the XL hardware adds this capability when used with the XLS-1 software, which Outlaw is including standard on the XL's they sell. I glanced at the VUDU site and saw a note in the FAQ's that the basic VUDU Box can only output 720p and higher resolutions via HDMI.

What happens if VUDU goes bankrupt? I don't know if there is an official answer to that - certainly the rental content would cease to work if their servers shut down, but one might presume that the purchased and downloaded movies already stored on the hard drive would be able to work indefinitely.

So it would seem to me that if you have an HDMI equipped receiver and television, and are utilizing these connections, then the only benefit to XL would be the additional space on the hard drive. Is that a correct assumption?

I'm no expert on this stuff, but that sounds reasonable.