I don't think it's dead. Sherwood is going ahead with their receiver, and (as I noted in another thread yesterday) this 886 deal had to be at least a few months in the making. The 886 can't be a long-term solution because Onkyo won't be keeping it in production that long. I'd guess that the 886 will be discontinued by the time we see 2010 on our calendars, based on the way Onkyo handles product cycles. The 997 is late, and they wanted to offer something comparable to the 990 that included HDMI for folks who didn't want to wait any longer. The 886 was a sensible choice for that. I'm not sure how much it changes the launch plans for the 997. They're still going to release it as soon as it is ready and they can get production space at the factory, and that schedule still depends to varying degrees on what other people are doing.

What I do wonder is if Outlaw is evaluating options for manufacturing partners on the 999 as an alternative to Sherwood/Inkel. Those sorts of changes take years to produce actual product, and whatever decisions get made this year regarding a successor to the 997 will take a long while to reach our ears.