It certainly does hint at interesting things to come in the next generation.

I saw something today about Onkyo's 875 receiver having an issue with its Reon scaler and 4:3 content when set up for a 16:9 output - it couldn't pillarbox. That seems like something that could be fixed with a firmware update (similar to the way OPPO added this ability to the 971H early in its life). I wonder if the DTC9.8 shares that problem?