Thanks for the honest review/rant 
I do not have the ppm yet myself but have read a lot about the pro’s and con’s. They are mostly the consistent with your experience:
- Hardware is fine (brightness & image quality) except for the limitations when using HDMI input (in fairness, they are known for some time now). However, this should not be that big of a deal since the device is primarily designed to be used with internal content. Unfortunately, the software part is not up to par and forces a lot of users to use an external player like a Chromecast, fire TV stick, android TV box, etc.
-
Software is where the real problems reside as you say. Apps which work fine on 90% of other devices do not work on the ppm due to various reasons (CPU not supported, no google services, etc). Unfortunately, there is no way to know if this situation will improve with time… Android TV would solve a lot of the problems but apparently cannot be installed because of the CPU not being supported (stated by philips in the topic below)
What was the reason given for not using Google Services?
What will you be doing next? 
Return the device or keep it and hope for software improvements?