I have friend from Singapore who sent me an SMS today. He said that the shops there have this unit available for about an equivalent price of Php 6K
not bad for a media player!
If you think about it, many of us keep our media on external drives anyway for easy swapping of files and access. So it kinda makes sense to plug the external harddrive to the player rather than attach a harddrive internally to a NMT. Also using an external harddrive has its benefits like less heat on the player and the ability to use eSATA external drives for faster file transfers
So I guess if you want a simple no frills (no network features) player, this might be a good choice.