Seriously, everyone enter the contest. It would be great if one of us won it and could review it. Ha ha.

I already have an Alesis EQ with 30 bands for channel that's been sitting unused for 3 years...

That Alesis is the right idea, keep analog, analog and keep digital, digital. (My bedroom studio is full of Alesis gear.) It just seems messy to me to take the analog output of a pre/pro, run it through a ADC, process it (although it is easier to design a parametric EQ in the digital domain rather than with analog filters), then run it back through a DAC before passing it on to the amp.

What we need is an "audio scaler", something which takes up to 7.1 over an HDMI connection (perhaps even bitstreams), performs the room correction and then passes the lip-synched, processed audio and video on to the receiver/processor as LPCM.

Great idea, but how much you think that would cost? Then again, it should not be that hard. In my car my Alpine head unit has a very solid P-EQ, crossover, and delay suite that works in the digital domain before hitting the DACs. That unit is under $600. Perhaps a company that already has all the HDMI licenses and know how could drop that simple chip in - Nah, that would be too easy.

Here's a review of the Neptune:

NEPTUNE AUDIO neptuneEQ Reviewed

Sounds like a good unit except for the 1/3 octave eq method they chose.

plus, isn't it pretty pricey?

Yeah, it's definitely more than I'd pay... without overwhelmingly positive reviews across the board, and even then, the money may be better spent on improving the acoustics of the room rather than trying to compensate for them with software.