I think it's probably a matter of deciding what you plan to do with your system over the next few years. Do you think that you'll pick up Blu-ray soon? If so, are you currently using your multichannel analog input? We can expect to see more and more Blu-ray players with onboard TrueHD and DTS-HD MA decoding available soon, at which point those could be paired up with a Model 990 and provide essentially the same capabilities as an HDMI-equipped processor. In that case, you could get a 990 now and hang on to it for a good while without sacrificing much - you wouldn't have an EQ solution like Audyssey, but you've also already got an SMS-1. On the other hand, if you delay your upgrade until later this year, you could be able to get an HDMI v1.3 product with lots of new bells and whistles.