I disagree that DVI was a bad choice. There are any number of products from the time the 990 arrived and later that offered (and in some cases still offer) HDMI ports that don't allow audio input. The 990's DVI ports still do the exact same thing that those HDMI ports do: switch video inputs.

The HDMI "interfaces" you mention are forms of CEC, a feature that was implemented (sort of) with HDMI v1.3. HDMI v1.3 was published over a year after the 990 started shipping, and easily a couple years after the 990's DVI switching was designed. HDMI v1.3 hardware took even longer to be designed and to arrive on the market. Even then, it took several more years for CEC implementations to be anything but a headache because there was no full set of standards and each manufacturer did things differently. I've only stopped seeing TV reviews lament the compatibility problems associated with CEC in the last six or eight months, and prior to that almost every TV review I read that mentioned CEC included at least one source component that failed to operate properly when used with the TV. It's entirely possible that the 997 will offer some degree of CEC compatibility, although personally (having recently tinkered a bit with CEC) I find that the benefits are marginal at best - a good universal remote will do all that CEC offers and then some.

As for the 997 and networked home media clients, I see media devices like that as just one more source to connect to the surround processor. Do you want to have a Blu-ray player or DVR built into the 997? I don't. Integration is unnecessary, as the media client need only offer audio and video outputs (an HDMI output would suffice, but it's not required) and it becomes functionally the same as a Blu-ray player, DVD player, cable receiver, or any other source you might have. Integrating such a rapidly evolving technology as network media clients into a platform that should expect to spend several years in production is a much better way to invite "obsolescence" than letting the media client remain separate.