I would have to agree with Sound.SD.

I have an XP-8 at home (I ordered it with control bucks in February '07) and I would definitely say it's ready for prime time. I have not experienced the latency issue, but I have run into some strange issues with sustained serial commands on Integra and DirecTV. Both were easy fixes using macros, and frankly they were problems I could have lived with anyway.

Get ready to do a bit more initial troubleshooting if this is your first unit, but you will definitely be happy with end result. Incidentally, troubleshooting your program goes much more quickly thanks to ethernet programming and NV flags.