SN sales director in the basement with the crack pipe.

Hopefully, Outlaw will learn something from this experience and either keep their development pipeline closer to the vest until much closer to actual delivery next time 'round or do a much better job of managing expectations of their customers. Outlaw is in a pretty bad situation here since they probably had no influence at all over the 972's release schedule and had to watch helplessly (like the rest of us) as SN tried to deal with their production issues.

On the bright side, at least they've realized that it's better to have something feature-competitive on the shelves and have offered the Onkyo as a stopgap. The alternative is a steady outflow of customers as competing products (both in terms of price and features...'cept for Trinnov) are available all over the marketplace now.

Who knows...it may turn out to be too expensive for a niche player to stay in the affordable processor business.