Ok my 950 of 8 years now just died. It sounds alot like the other deaths I have read about on other posts. Can anyone please tell me when the 997 is to be released????? I am very desperate...don't really want to go with the 990, but I guess I'll have to.

No schedule for the Model 997. I haven't been following the R-972 thread at AVS very closely, but I don't think it's been particularly active lately. That suggests to me that the Model 997 is still hung up in line behind the 972.

Outlaw has said that it will be a minimum of 60 days following the release of the Sherwood 972 before they release the 997. While a handful of 972s have been sold, there are still bugs in it, mostly with the Trinnov set up, and Sherwood is still working on the fix. So it would appear that the most optimistic release date of the 997 would be February 2010, and more realisticaly later.
Sorry about your 950, I still have mine, and am crossing my fingers that it stays alive 'til the 997 is out.

Need to do some trouble shooting on my 950 myself, hoping it's just a fuse; it not it's dead too. I'll be looking at the Onkyo/Integra offerings, possibly the DHC-40.1.

It's official, my 950 had given up the ghost too. Don't have the scratch to pick up a new anything at the moment and my wife wants me to get the 950 fixed. I told her it'll cost more to fix than it's worth and would rather save the repair money for a new unit. Given all the difficulties with the SN 972 I'm pretty sure my next unit will not be the 997 whenever...or if...it ever comes out. I'll definitely be looking at the Onkyo/Integra offerings and possibly a Denon receiver to use as a preamp.

Gonig with the 990 is a pretty good way to go. What are the symptoms of 950 death. Could it be a losse wire or a bad power supply? May be easy to fix. Call the Outlaws for help yet?

It won't power on, I've unplugged for awhile and tried power it back on, tried resetting the button beneath the volume control, and checked the fuse which was still good. I did see in another thread that there are actually four fuses inside the 950 and I only looked for one so I'm going to open it back up and check for those too. I have contacted Outlaw, they said to get back with them after I've checked for the other fuses.

Something made the fuses blow if that is the case. Sometimes they go due to age but more likely there is a bad contact somewhere letting too much juice flow to somewhere it shouldn't. Is it still under warranty

Sadly it is no longer under warranty. I'll give a whack at the other fuses before I try anything else, we did recently have a big power outage that could possibly have triggered something and one of the kids may have had it on at the time.

I'd considered the 990 but that still doesn't get the the HDMI switching I need and doesn't get around the PS3 (my trusty BR source) not being able to transmit lossless audio except by HDMI.

Will Outlaw release schematics and/or a tech manual for out of production products like the 950? That definitely makes it easier for the do-it-yourselfer trying to debug old equipment.