Until Blu-ray players are standard in a receiver, the 7000 is not a standard AV receiver. It is an AV receiver with a BD player built in to it. We saw this with DVD players, as well, and in many cases those receivers were offered both on their own and in packages with speakers (hence my HTiB comment). It didn't catch on, because it wasn't a good idea. I don't recall a single DVD receiver that was considered a truly top-rate receiver, although I admit that I could certainly have overlooked some and I think Panasonic had some decent entry-level units that were at least fairly respectable for the price (~$300). The argument against this "complete AV entertainment solution" is that it locks you in to that BD player (which may or may not be pretty crappy - Samsung's not had the greatest track record with BD players) and if anything fails you are potentially forced to throw out the whole thing. Sure, they may sell a lot at Best Buy or CostCo, but I don't think that it is a precursor to any sort of industry standard.

The fact that those functions are integral to the player side of that unit is hugely relevant, at least from a design standpoint. (My day job is engineering, so I may be focusing more on that than some consumers would, but I think a company like Outlaw has to think that way, too.) There's a lot of silicon and a lot of software development involved in implementing that SoC so you can have those apps and media playback abilities, and I still think it's wasteful to transplant all that hardware and software into a receiver when it already exists elsewhere in the equipment rack and can be plugged in - if the consumer wants it - with a single HDMI cable. Unless the companies making DSP chips for receivers (TI and Cirrus, primarily) start building these functions into their chipsets, I don't see an efficient way to match this level of functionality without adding new hardware. I highly doubt that Anthem will do it in either their processors or their receivers, and Anthem has been toward the forefront of HDMI implementation among small audio manufacturers. I don't see Parasound doing it. Certainly Onkyo might, and Denon might even get into the mix, but they are chasing a different customer - I don't see it being part of what the smaller companies try to do at this point. I also don't see Onkyo or Denon being able to provide functions that are as good as what can be had with a game console or standalone device unless they borrow one of those standalone devices and drop the entire thing into their chassis. Perhaps things really will change more than I expect and the generation of processors that follows the Model 998 and Model 978 will include some network audio and video functions. At this point, though, I don't see it happening, and I'm OK with that.