When they said "end of the year", did they specify 2011?

Unfortunately...no.

I remember when the new pre-pro was discussed 2-3 years ago

sigh.........

starting to get tired of waiting. I've been manually HDMI input switching my TV for over a year waiting to get a pre-amp that would handle that instead of wasting money on an HDMI switch. I appreciate challenges and delays but man.

What a disappointment to find out 978 is not going to be ready this year. Who knows when it will be available, by next March??? In the meantime, I decided to purchase UMC-1 and just arrived last night. After quick setup, I gave it a listen for couple of hours and lucky for me there is no major problems that I read over the other forums. When 978 is finally ready, I will look into if it is worth the upgrade from UMC-1.

I'm guessing you're probably right about the time frame. It does appear that this unit is in beta, and as speculated elsewhere, beta is probably a 3+ month affair. This should move the release date sometime into the 1Q of 2012.

I've been around for a while and while I appreciate Outlaws conservatism of not announcing a release date the constant delays and shelving a previous processor have become over the top irritating. I honestly hope Outlaw will consider a different approach for products that have been announced. Please consider having a public beta forum so non beta testers can see what's going on in the beta process. I've seen companies do this an it's been successful and it helps build up anticipation and troubleshooting. Your current process is horrible because you're not respecting your faithful customers, you just keep letting them hang on for month after month with very little information. I would be more understanding if you were a company like Apple that had a history of secrecy and then launched within a time frame, but you'r not and you haven't. Open public beta forums are a real treat for those of us seriously interested, so please consider it as an alternative to what you're currently doing.

Retep -
Well said, I couldn't have put it any better.

Guys, I respect the way Outlaw does things. If you can't wait, then bail. I for one, like my 950 even though I'm behind the times, I have faith the 978 will fit my needs and fit the bill for the next 10 or so years. I hate waiting also, but I also have considered doing something else. I had a Marantz receiver prior to the 950, and if you can't wait, the 7005, I'm positive is a great piece of gear. Outlaws will not release something until they believe it is ready. I respect that! I too am hurting, but...... it is what it is, wait, or don't, but the complaining won't change the bang for the buck factor and shouldn't.......

Indeed. What I can't quite fathom is how Outlaw manages to keep the lights on. There can't be much profit in reselling Chinese-assembled electronics for D&M Holdings (the owners of Marantz/Denon/Snell(which they just gutted)/etc...fortunately they haven't gutted McIntosh yet). There is virtually no activity on these forums anymore and much of it revolves around speculation concerning product delays.

So while I see the occasional "announcement," actual new product deliveries have been few and far between and delivery dates are often vaguely hinted at...and missed. That's pretty much been the case for a couple of years now.

How does a small niche player even have a chance in this software driven home theater landscape we find ourselves in? It's sad, but time (and the world) marches on.

Best,