As you say, video switching is already covered satisfactorily by the 1070's DVI switching. I'm doing it now with my 990 and an HDMI-to-DVI cable for my Oppo 981HD.

So far, only one or two HD-DVD players have emerged without a multichannel analog output and the only Blu-ray player to lack multichannel analog output is the PS3. We can expect that to remain the case by and large, with a few entry-level players dropping the multichannel analog output for cost. I'd expect early combo HD-DVD/Blu-ray players to include multichannel analog output both to differentiate themselves from those entry-level players (and to help win over the crowd of late adopters earnestly staying out of the format war and away from HDMI v1.3 receivers ).

Six or seven years is a fair way out - but even then, the only formats that are going to offer a compelling reason to use HDMI for audio instead of SPDIF are HD-DVD, Blu-ray, DVD-Audio, and SACD. I don't know of anything else that is on the horizon that would join that list. And since those are all likely to have at least some players available with multichannel analog output (ideally all in one chassis if folks like Denon and OPPO Digital can develop true combo players), something like the 1070 could still stay in the mix...