I know for a fact that "a lot of people would be very pleased if they also did something for the 861v4, which remains a great processor."

As regards the 861v8, I know that Meridian have publicly stated that MQA implementation for this processor is not in the first phase. It is also well established that the 861v8 is going to be upgraded to v9 or v10 or whatever. It is an educated guess (call it speculation, if you like) that the new version will include MQA but I do not know this as a fact. That's why I used the word "maybe". However, anything is possible with Meridian - for all I know they may have used the delay in MQA's launch to catch up on the 861 MQA implementation. That would seem logical. On the other hand they are perfectly capable of launching a v9 or v10 or whatever version which does not include MQA.

Streaming: Roon, NUC, QNAP869 NAS
2ch system: dCS Vivaldi, Audionet Stern, Audionet Heisenberg, Magico Q1
Retro system: 101/104/105, Red Rose Spirit