Spent a few nights with my old Mede8er 500x with the FW updated to the latest one. To summarize, this player is indeed very much matured in terms of FW, totally stable, totally reliable and totally flexible. And in terms of speed, my PCH cant match especially in terms of playback and stoppage of pure BD rips.
I personally think this is the right thing in terms of development, that is, make the FW fully matured first to get rid of the hiccups here and there instead of primarily changing UIs or coming out with new models so soon and leaving the old models hoping for continued FW updates and support. I happen to make some test with another seemingly popular model that for whatever reason seems to hang a few titles and would need to be rebooted to make the same files playable. Im talking of very high quality files that play flawlessly on the PC, the PCH and of course the Mede8er. Well I hope that brand actually and finally knows how to update their FW this time.
But again as for the Mede8er with the latest FW, it is impressive even without BD Java capability. I was thinking of selling mine after having gotten another PCH but the Mede8er is simply too good to let go and certainly still lives up to its long time reputation as one of the best players in the market, with one of the better FW development teams.