sony bdp-s570 blu ray confusion

I've seen the aforementioned player discussed a little bit in this forum (mostly on general performance etc) and of course elsewhere. Its seems to have a decent review and supposedly plays 3d, with the recent firmeware upgrades. Still had a few questions that I hope some actual owners can comment on...

1. Its DLNA support seems shaky according to comments. Most common refrain is that it doesnt recognise several formats like mkv (even though the specs say it does since its a codec issue of some sort). But I do see a few people saying that the right dlna server that can transcode the videos (such as mkv) on the fly can actually stream everything to the player.

One of these servers is mezzmo which is a paid one. Anyone used a free dlna server that does on-the-fly transcoding with good results especially with files larger than 4GB. the latter requirement is another common complaint that the player doesnt play over 4GB from the usb drive due to FAT32 format being the only thing it takes. Also, if people have used other paid/free servers with good results, I'm all ears as I do have a reasonably large 1080p mkv file collection that I would like to stream.

2. how is the upscaling performance for standard DVD's. I do have a large dvd collection that I would like to see thru the player. Does it really upscale everything to 1080p without any of those 3:2 pulldown/black bars etc.

3. lots of comments on netflix being spotty over wifi. How about a hardwired lan connection. any one see issues when directly plugged into ethernet. (On an unrelated note), its sucky that netflix doesnt send DD 5.1 for streamed content to BR players (only PS3 has that...)

Still on the fence on this player so I do welcome other suggestions. I dont care that much about the 3D feature but the sacd playback is one nice thing about this. My budget is under 200-250$ so that kind of rules out the Pioneers and Oppo etc. I'm not doing console gaming (PC's rock!) so a PS3 is not really on my list. Anyone have any personal experience with the LG BD570/590, samsung bd-c6900 or the panny dmp-bd85k (those are the others on my shortlist). I am wondering if the final analysis will be to get a PS3 at 299$ and be done with it but I'm trying to stay under budget.