Yea i read about these issues before i bought it but i dont have a need for ac3 through hdmi but can see why that would put people off, the remote is an easy fix and from the posts i read it seemed that the new firmware fixed it crashing on HD for everyone except 1 irish guy and they seem to be puting out updates regularly so with that in mind i got it, but im not bothered if it's crap i will give it to someone else to use on sd if it is.