I agree with all of your observations. I was a little disappointed with the menus as well. I like how you can alternate betweek the 1080, 720, etc by just pressing Up on the D-pad. However, most stuff looks just fine to me with just leaving it on 1080.

I'm also suprised at how much space the thing has. I know mine has at least 5 HD movies, several 1 hour HD TV shows, and a bunch of other HD programming, but I can still record entire HD football games and hours upon hours of SD programming. It's phenomenal!