I hadn't been following the UMC real closely (I have an account at Emotiva Lounge but rarely log in). I did come across thus AVS thread this morning, though. It seems like a lot of problems to have crop up as unintended consequences of a firmware update.

This is very true. I think that Emotiva may have been a little too insistent that it would be "perfect" when it shipped, especially since some of the bugs that are appearing are a bit on the "easy to spot/irritating" side.