Just Received my Zero One Mercury Today

Some further Observations:

No dither still sounds best to me. I don't really hear any difference with the Nyquist and Nshape dither options, except maybe a bit more low-level noise. The TPDF dither initially sounded good, as it seemed to enhance the upper frequency ranges, but it soon grew annoying, especially with solo piano, as it began to sound "clangy". In doing some reading up on dither and its uses, I found references that state that, for audio, use of dither is definitely superior to simple truncation (i.e. no dithering) to 8 and 12 bits, has a smaller effect on 16 bit data, but makes an inaudible difference on 24 bit data. As the internal DAC in the Mercury is 24 bit (assuming it uses the same chips as the Ar38 DAC), there should really be no need for dithering at all, as quantization error is inaudible with a 24 bit word length. That is confirmed by what I hear.
I have settled on the HQ1 filter for now, as is has a much gentler slope than the Redbook brickwall, but still filters out the ultrasonic hash that might play havoc with the rest of my system.
Still loving the 24 bit word length and 192 KHz upsampling frequency.
Ripped 30 CDs last night, about 1/10 of the way there...

Answer to my own question: I went to the Zero One website and checked the prices. Seems reasonable. This is one unit I will seriously consider.

If it is as good as advertised, I would replace my one-box player for it.

How much does the Zero One Mercury cost?

The display is roughly 5" x 2", but the characters are very large - I can easily read them from 15' away, and I'm not 20/20, even with glasses.
Alvin responded immediately and thinks my remotes may be "duds". He is having his folks find two that definitely work at 15' and shipping them to me by courier - excellent customer service. If that doesn't work, it's got to be the sensor. If so, I may volunteer to put it in myself if he ships it to me - how hard can it be?
The build quality appears to be excellent - it is heavy and very solid, and works perfectly (other than the remote). I had a chance to rip some more CDs tonight and it's much faster than I thought it would be, usually about 10 minutes max. The interface seemed a bit clunky yesterday, but I was flying through the commands today without having to think very much (a good thing).
Again I have to stress that playback from the HD is excellent, better than any CD player I have ever heard; it's tight, transparent, and the quiet parts are DEAD QUIET. Once ripped, a search though the album titles can be done alphabetically, or you can set up playlists (80's rock, Blues, Jazz, etc.).
My system is as follows:

Zero One Mercury CD/HD
Supratek Chenin Preamp
Flying Mole DAD-100 Amps (modded)
Zu Druid Speakers
Zu Mini-Method Subwoofer
Zu Julian Speaker Cables
Blue Jeans and Dayton interconnects (may be room for improvement here)
DIY Belden Powercords
Dedicated power line for source, pre and amps
Cryoed Pass and Seymour Outlets from VH Audio

Thanks for your post/s and congrats on the player. I'm very interested in the Zero One products. In regard to the remote, there must be a problem with your player's remote sensor. I hope you don't have to send it back. How is the display? Alvin indicated it can be read from about 10ft away--is this the case? Also, how's build quality?

I see everyone is as excited as me...

Anyway, I got to play with it a little yesterday, and have the following observations (based on very limited listening):
The CD player is very good, and sounds about equal to the other high-end units I have heard - definitely better than the Sony megachanger I was using.
It is very easy to rip the CD onto the hard drive - Johnny Winter's Guitar Slinger CD took only about 9 minutes to copy 10 tracks. The built in CD database recognized it immediately and assigned the correct album and track titles to the songs automatically, a very neat feature that saves a lot of typing.
Playback from the HD sounds better than that from the CD, with more transparency and detail, and more bass slam.
In playing around with the playback settings, it seems to me (again from a very limited sampling) that the maximum word length (24 bits), maximum upsampling frequency (192KHz), no dither and no filter sounded best to me. Definitely a lot to tweak with this unit - it should keep me out of trouble for a long time...
One problem IDed so far - the remote only seems to work from less than 5 feet away from the unit, not exactly very remote. I need it to work from 15 feet at least. I tried both supplied remotes, and two set of batteries, with the same results. I have emailed Alvin Heng from Zero One to see what's up with this - hopefully nothing requiring me to return it...
I'll keep you all posted as I explore the feature further.