I'm afraid that FireWire (as often requested as it has been) is going to be killed off by HDMI, so you may never see that included - HDMI v1.2 offers all that FireWire could and is likely to be supported by far more source components than FireWire ever was.

HDMI will appear in the next generation, but Outlaw wisely chose to launch the 990 in May 2005 with DVI instead - for the simple reason that HDMI was too much of a moving target. DVI provides the ability to switch HDMI video (all you need is a DVI-HDMI cable) without the consumer confusion of changing versions. When the 990 launched, HDMI v1.1 was the latest version, but now HDMI v1.2 is out (with the ability to support SACD) and many people want to see HDMI v1.3 before they buy into an HDMI processor.

The 990 may yet get EQ capability - its cousin the P-965 has it (although the implementation used on the 965 apparently didn't appeal to the Outlaws and they've held off) and at least one person posted that he'd been told they were pursuing something that they liked and that could be provided with a firmware update.

I'm curious about Bluetooth - what devices would you use with Bluetooth in a processor? Hadn't ever thought of an application for that.