After watching Iron Man and Vantage Point (both 1080p!) on the Egreat 31b, my thoughts:
The big advantage of this model is that it has a USB slave, which means that you can plug it to your PC and manipulate the files through the PC.
It also has a USB port at the back so cabling is neater. Ang Popcorn 100 kasi ay nasa harap lang ang USB port.
Response is much faster than before. I think that's mainly cuz of the firmware update.
Start-up time is still slow. Parang PC sya.
Now you can switch it off. Popcorn 100 kasi, walang Off button. Standby lang.
The remote is better. Ganda shape nya - more ergonomic. Piano finish. But basically, the remote still sucks. The play/pause/stop buttons should have different shapes. It's very easy to press the stop and then that's the end of you kasi wala syang Resume. Hahanapin mo kung saan ka nag-stop.
Mas gwapo rin dating nya. Pangit ng Popcorn.
For me, the biggest problem is the noise of the fan. Maingay. I sit about 7 feet from the unit and at that distance, tolerable na ang noise. If you sit maybe 3 feet away, it's really noisy.
Overall, its pretty good. But if you are seated close to it, it's way too noisy.
And by the way, the movies were great! No stutters. No drop-outs. A lot of detail. Jaw-dropping.