Implementation is important no matter what, of course, and we don't know about how the 972/997's Reon implementation will stack up with others. Doing scaling in a receiver is also more complex than in a DVD player, because the possible array of video input signals increases significantly when you open up the field to any connected video component (from 480i analog to 720p and 1080i broadcast HD). Having said that, what I've seen consistently when following discussions of the 983H is that most people who have used both the 983H's ABT implementation and various Reon implementations is that the 983H tends to appear more film-like. The Reon solutions are often said to be a bit more "plastic" in appearance. It's still a very good hardware platform, and many people are very fond of it.

There are so many things to wonder about at this point regarding the 997, but I'll toss out another that falls into the realm of video processing. One issue that I've seen mentioned regarding some other processors and receivers (I remember it coming up with the Onkyo 905 and the 9.8 and 885 processors that were based on it) is a lack of per-input video controls - particularly a "video bypass" option that would allow really high performance sources (such as the 983H) to pass through untouched while still allowing processing to be employed for other inputs.