MicthelEnt, for the high volume CE manufacturers, they designed those products with Walmart, Circuit City, and other retialers in mind. However don't forget about the smaller boutique manufacturers that are making products specifically for Home Theater, and listen to installers. Look at Runco. See how far you can go selling other peoples products just by listening to installers.
So don't get you hopes up that there will be a big name VCR with rack mount kit and RS-232.

DVI and HDMI are for the mass market. All HDMI is is dual link DVI with digital audio. Now someone explain why I need audio delivered to my display! It only makes sense to Joe Sixpack that doesn't own an amp or speakers, and can only figure out how to connect one cable from his DirecTV box to his big screen.
The trouble is that the big/early spenders on new technology are not Joe Sixpack, and they really have no use for HDMI. In a nutshell, it's a waste of time and money.
Also I don't think most manufacturers give a dam about our ability to pirate videos, and are consciesly (sp?) trying to prevent us from recording, save one: Sony. Sony owns a movie studio and one ot the top name brands. They don't want one business to erode the other, so they heavily push DVI and now HDMI. They Sony sales force at CEDIA kept droning on and on about how much better HDMI is with it's all digital path, blah blah blah. Meanwhile over at thhe Mitsubishi booth, HDTV looked just as good over Firewire.
-LNB