As excited as I am to get my hands on a 997 I personally am in no rush for Outlaw to release it.

Memories here seem to be selective regarding the 990. It took Outlaw 3 years to straighten out the 990 bass management. 3 years! Remember that? So my plea to Outlaw is take whatever time you need to get it right. And that's not saying I expect a perfect machine out of the shoot.

I believe that most people looking toward the 997 are being relatively patient compared to some of the other product discussions that I have visited.

I'm still sticking to my guns in waiting for the 997 release. I haven't discovered anything else I would prefer at this point.

I'm do not mind waiting either. No rush as an upgrade is not required. I'm quite happy with the 990. I really excited for reviews on the Tinnov technology.

As much as I am willing to be patient (and have been since taking receipt of my 7125 amp damned neer a year ago), I am not so willing to give room for error. The whole point of this prolonged delay is to "get it right".
Any thing less is unacceptable. We have been fed the company line, "we will not release until we have it right", so, it had better be right.
...crickets, chirp, chirp, chirp

I proudly own the 990/7700 combo and I have to agree with Retep that an upgrade is not a necessity at this moment as I am quite happy with my setup from Outlaw.
Not to say that I would not upgrade in the future but I would rather wait for Outlaw to get it right the first time instead of doing upgrades for improved....well anything.
I want to plug, play, and enjoy.

It may be because I was around here for the Model 950 launch, but I think the 997's roll-out has so far been remarkably smooth for something that appears to have had at least a year of delay beyond what Outlaw had anticipated. I think part of it is because Outlaw has generally refrained from naming dates - that inevitably creates frustration among folks who are waiting. Having something like the 990 already out there probably helps, though. My wife still misses our 990. At times, so do I.

As the 997 development-through-delivery time continues to stretch further and further, (If I were ‘Outlaw’, I don’t know if I would trust all the same members of the 997 development team again, especially if some of them were the same ones that developed some of the original 990 ‘foibles’), other manufacturers have moved on and are preparing their next generation gear. Do you think that the 997’s feature set is being revamped to include developments that will generally be expected in receivers/processors by the time the 997 becomes available for purchase, or, despite a potentially excellent quality-for-value ratio, will the 997 seem slightly ‘behind the times’ the day it arrives?

I think that changing feature sets now is almost certainly not on the table. I could be wrong, but I think they are more focused on finishing it. Just considering what happens with design work in my industry and trying to relate it to what is happening with the 997, they appear to be somewhere between the final push to get construction documents, the tail end of the bid period, or perhaps the actual construction process itself. Late design is perhaps the worst possible time to start making changes to building systems, second only to after design is done. The same is going to be true for development of something like the 997: beta testing is probably the worst time to start trying to add significant new features.

what additional feature sets would anyone be looking for outside of trinnov, dolby and dts's lossless sound, and hdmi? i'll be starting in on a home theater project within the next year and i'm just curious.

I would think that 9.1 functionality and wi-fi connectivity for things like Netflix and a built in phono stage would probably be the 3 biggest features missing from the 997.