I've been using this player since August, 2009 unit I bought in Automatic Centre in Glorietta. So far it's been good.
+ Superb picture quality as a DVD and media file player (divx, xvid, avi, wmv) on my Sony Bravia KLV-40V300A via HDMI.
+ Excellent sound on my "antique" analog sound system: Pioneer RX receiver plus JBL speakers
+ Reads / plays my 160GB USB enclosure having samsung IDE 2.5" HDD even without power adapter. The power adapter though is required if using usb extension cable. Otherwise, the supplied USB power of the DV610 is sufficient to run an HDD enclosure as long as it's formatted FAT32
- Cannot read mkv, mp4, mpeg-1, mpeg-2, .dat in USB mode
- No repeat play for mp3 files
I've upgraded my firmware to Hakan's StM version 2.0. A few month's after I bought the player. And my experience has gotten better. The features of the upgrade are clearly stated here:
http://www.pioneerfaq.info/english/dv610.php?player=DV-610AV&question=FirmwaresThe advantages I liked most with the upgrade are bass, treble boost, equalizer, display of long filenames in USB mode, improved contextual displays e.g. titles, timings have bigger font sizes. Also the upgrade has fixed file corruption issue wherein it now skips to the next song/mp3 if the current one is unreadable. I'm particularly happy with the added option of shuffle play which is really useful if you have big mp3 collection.
The newer versions (currently v2.1A and up) posted in Hakan's site however will change the file browser's color to silver (from greenish). It might just be me but the combination used by Hakan rendered the letters unreadable. IMHO this is the only drawback of the custom firmware though minimal. I'll post some picture of the upgraded version if anyone's interested.