I'm not the original poster, but I have an Oppo 980H (modded by Dan Wright) which will, in stock form, output DSD over HDMI. I bought this player so that it can be connected to a prepro via HDMI, and look forward to having DSD support in the prepro. Why wouldn't the 997 have this capability? Cost? I'm guessing that Outlaw is at the mercy of the Sherwood design. Let's hope it's there.

On a side note, the Oppo 980 ("refurbished") can be purchased directly from Oppo on Ebay with a 'buy it now' price of $135. If you use the Live.com search to access Ebay, you can get a 'rebate' from Microsoft of 25%.