The issue about the remote has some solutions, so that's not much of a problem.

I forgot to mention that the 40 GB (or 80GB)HD can be replaced with a much larger (up to 320 GB) HD.

The other thing that is interesting is that the 80 has essentially been taken off the market. The speculation is that it will be replaced with a 120 GB or 160 GB unit.

Unless it has some other tricks that can't be done with a firmware upgrade to the 40GB unit, the 40 looks like the one I will grab.