If the 990 is going to get any cheaper at the (very) last end (fire sale), this might get very tempting. I have an old Onkyo 700 series receiver. It turns out I don't miss the HDMI switching (tv has 4 inputs) except for on screen display of the receiver volume and status (big deal) so I could live without the 990's having it too. The only question is what would be missing audio wise from the 990 to the 997 (or any later generation processor). Until I go BD (still waiting for Oppo's machine to ship and BD disks to drop a bit in price) the processing options of the 990 are good enough (I think even good enough for BD as well in some compatibility mode).