Thanks Scott, I hope so too
Ls7corvete, like Nikhsub1 posted, we are talking about a plastic mid plate here not a threaded acrylic top with barbed fittings. Acrylic is easy to machine, reduces the overall weight of the block, and costs... besides it looks good. Again, since the acrylic is not tapped for barbed fittings, it works just fine...
Unlike polycarbonate even tapped acrylic tops (if done correctly) just work fine too. We've been offering DD TDX and RBX blocks with acrylic tops and straight threaded barbs for quite some time now, and never received a single RMA (if any customers contacted DD directly, I wouldn't know though)
We may offer an optional nickel plated brass mid plate as well (if there's a lot of requests for it), but I don't think it will do any better, other than increasing the cost.
On a side note, I tested copper and brass mid plates as well, and performance-wise there's no difference.