I think the absence of surround processors with HDMI v1.1 support can be linked directly to the inevitable arrival of v1.3, with some secondary responsibility going to the confusion surrounding the HD format war. If v1.1 had been a long-term standard (rather than one that was current for just over one year) we'd have likely seen HDMI support appearing sooner, and if the HD-DVD/Blu-ray mess had been less uncertain that would have helped even more.

Now that we have an HDMI standard that should (hopefully) be around for a while and both formats have been finalized (more or less - some interactivity content is still a bit hazy), the way is open for actual progress. The engineer in me suspects that we'll be waiting at least 18 months or so before any processors show up with HDMI v1.3, but I don't have any hard evidence to support that estimate - it could be a little sooner (which would be cool) and I doubt it'll be too much longer.