HDMI has to be settled at some point, and it should be happening sooner rather than later (although I have my doubts about the likelihood of that). Clearly the HDMI group has less consideration for the consumer than we'd like based on what they have done with HDMI to date, but the continual revision process is in no one's best interests - and serves no practical purpose - if it continues forever. And we know what HDMI v1.3 can do, but are those capabilities actually going to be used by the formats that it was developed to support? Players can't currently pass a TrueHD or DTS-HD MA bitstream even when using early v1.3 transmitter chips, but even if the chipsets supported it, will the software allow it? Or will the software force the player to decode these bitstreams so that features like interactive menus, alternate commentary tracks, and downloaded content can overlay their respective audio onto the soundtrack? Automatic AV sync will be handy once it is available throughout the entire signal path, but how many cable/satellite boxes and standard DVD players are going to move to a more expensive v1.3 chip just to support this feature? We don't even know what future format might support the expanded color depth features.

If the Reon is the chip they use, I'd agree that it would be appropriate to coordinate with the chip maker to optimize the implementation - just like they'd coordinate with Cirrus or TI or whoever they get their DSP chip from. Onkyo was moving very fast to get these HDMI v1.3 receivers out in order to grab a big chunk of the "I need v1.3" market, and I doubt there was time to do more than get the chip working and crank up the assembly line.