Was finally able to track down a unit yesterday thanks to a post here in PinoyDVD. First thing I did of course was to update the firmware. Quite straight forward. Nakakatakot lang talaga while waiting for the progress bar to finish na baka magka power fluctuation. Fortunately I had a UPS so no worries.
Loading/mounting of the drive (1tb) is not that quick. More than 30 seconds by my estimate. No big deal. Just wish it was faster.
Though I understand the NMTs take a couple of minutes to boot (tama ba?) so panalo pa rin ang 30+ seconds.
This morning I inspected my 1080p files and they were all playing well. Even fast forwarding and skipping 10mins forward. There were no problems. I was also using the next button to go to the next movie. After 5 or so movies (when it reached TDK 16gb incidentally), it showed a black screen for the longest time. I wasn't that worried initially because I know it plays. I thought maybe it just needed a reboot. So I did. Wala pa rin. Pati eject and remount. Pati on/off of both the drive and the device. At first I thought something was wrong with the drive--that the files had been corrupted. (Note: I can see the drive and the files. I just couldn't play them--any of the files by this time.) I tried a flash drive and it wouldn't play either. So now I thought I broke the unit! Finally I reset the device (in the system menu). And finally it worked. Checking the settings afterwards, nothing seems to have changed so I don't know if the reset fixes something else other than the user controllable options. Something to watch out for though.
The good news is it played all the 1080p files I tested (almost 20) without any problems. May artifacts lang yung Sin City. Not sure if the file itself is corrupt. I'll try it on my laptop later.
So anyway those are my initial impressions. Forgive the length. Kindly post if you've exprienced anything similar.
On my wish list for the next firmware update: frame by frame or still/step. It's standard on DVD players so they should put in that feature, too. For those with the Egreat or Popcorn hour, does your NMT have this option?