I know exactly why they were so secretive. They were roasted in online forums for the delays experienced during the 950's development, and they clearly didn't want to do that again. "Delivery creep" (the design and manufacturing version of "feature creep") is very common - both of AV123's Emotiva SSP's have suffered from it, the Model 1070 is struggling with it currently, and plenty of other products (such as my Yamaha DVD player, which was originally announced for March 2004 and didn't show up until September) go through the same thing. They elected to try something totally different with the 990, and I think it's sort of cool.