I should hope so...when was the original 997 announced again? LOL

Feature-wise, the Emotiva product is much more interesting to me. Neither company has been particularly confidence inspiring in the home theater processor business for the past few years. That said, if both units come out around the same time and both function as advertised, I'd be much more inclined to purchase the XMC-1 than the 978. Tact is THAT good, but we'll see how things play out. I'll go further and say that the 978 isn't particularly interesting, in general, unless they've been adding missing features during these last "run silent run deep" months.