Hi Declandio,
Let us know if you have any luck with that. It'd also be nice to know if Apple recognizes a problem with the upgrade.
I will let you know. I went through the motions and called apple support, they told me to restore etc and asked a bunch of questions. I told them I had restored a few times, from within the on-screen menu and then via iTunes, with no success. They ran out of suggestions and had to book me an appointment with a 'genius'. I'm 99% sure the genius will replace it without too much resistance.
Unfortunately, the nearest appointment that was convenient for me (too busy at work this week to be able to skive off to the apple store) is on Saturday, so I'll post back once I've come back from the apple store.
The tech guy on the phone said that it usually takes up to 3 months for new products on the shelves (or refurbs) to be preloaded with the latest firmware, so the chance of getting an exchanged unit with old firmware are pretty high. He also took details about my tv (including firmware version), AV receiver and my chosen connections. He said that info would be fed back to the product engineers so that they can look into it.
If they weren't such control freaks, I could downgrade the software myself at home and they wouldn't have to swap the unit. Silly f@ckers. If only I had a micro-USB cable, I could have saved the ssh blobs, downgrade the software, and they wouldn't have to replace the unit or even deal with me over the phone. I only managed to get a cable last night and by then, apple was no longer signing blobs (or however you phrase that) for the previous software version.
I asked the tech support guy if they've had many calls about this. He said they've received a few but not 'a lot'. Call them if you have this problem so they know that it's real and not just a small handful of people.