I don't feel too bad about assuming that the Model 978 will arrive. If you look at the HDMI delays experienced so far, they are almost entirely tied up in the Model 997 development. The decision to not try to be frontrunners developing an HDMI platform in 2007 or 2008 probably made a ton of sense at the time, and the combination of an existing business relationship (particularly one that produced the highly successful Model 990) and the promise of Trinnov just made it that much more appealing. Unfortunately, that left them sitting for several years waiting for promised hardware to emerge so they could customize it to their needs. The end result wasn't good enough, so they had to start from scratch. The "from scratch" approach is one they've successfully used in the past, so I don't see any reason to expect them to fail this time.

Also, they could have released a Model 997 that didn't do what they expected of it, sold a decent number of them, and used that income to help tide them over while they developed the Model 978 and Model 998. That would have given them an "Outlaw" processor they could point to. They chose not to because it didn't meet their standards. It was a "lose-lose" sort of decision, but I think the consumers probably benefited from their decision and I think in the long run it was the best choice for Outlaw as well.