HDMI is quite the buzz, but it's a buzz with some nasty bite behind it. When the 990 was released (after some unknown period of development), HDMI v1.1 was the latest, and there was no word as to whether v1.1 would work at all with Blu-ray and HD-DVD (no word that it wouldn't, either, but it was worryingly unsure). HDMI v1.2 is now the latest, but I've seen a lot of people online who find any arrangement where the player does the decoding distasteful and want to pass the original bitstream - which won't be possible until (if) HDMI v1.3 is released. All of these version changes relate solely to audio - the video side of the format is locked down (largely because it was borrowed from the older and more mature DVI-HDCP), and the 990's DVI switching is transparent to HDMI's video.