This thread was never going to be about the 997. And since I haven't seen any mention of Sherwood R-972's arriving at retail, it would be safe to say that the 997 is still be sitting in line behind the 972.
And an option for a whole bunch of half-price credit. It's certainly different for Outlaw, but I can see there being a real market for it.

This offering is interesting, even if it may not really fit with my family's current movie-viewing habits. I poked around on Vudu's site a bit, and I can see where it could have some real appeal to people under the right circumstances. I'm something of a "physical media" type person - I get some songs off iTunes on occasion, but I still buy CD's as much or moreso than I download music. As such, I'm not terribly keen to build a library of downloaded movies, being more likely to rent or pick up a DVD/Blu-ray to keep on the shelf. On top of that, our schedules are such that we use the one-at-a-time Netflix service and still have to carve out time to watch those discs, so we're less likely to use an on-demand rental service. Even still, I can see how a wide array of good HD being available for spur of the moment movie choices could be very cool - especially if it does work "instantly" or close to it (unlike what some other systems like iTunes/AppleTV's rental setup, which I've tried a bit and found very underwhelming).
There's a note in the VUDU XL manual indicating that they plan to add support for external NAS via a firmware update, which would let you go as big as you want to build an array.