I think the current best guess is "sometime next year," but there doesn't seem to be much more detail than that. Perhaps someone has more information, but I think that's it.

If you can live without the TRUE-HD and DTS-HD audio (I think that's what they're called), then the 990 may work for you. It's a great preamp, especially at its current price. Since I'm still on the fence about HD-DVD and BluRay, I don't care about the HDMI stuff. Even when I get an HD-DVD or BluRay player, I'm willing to use the preouts of the player itself.

I wouldn't rule out the 990, or any other non-high-def-audio preamp just because it can't process the latest audio formats. To me, most other bells and whistles are also irrelevant. As long as my preamp works well for audio, and has a 7.1 channel input, I'm OK.