It seems all these players (non-HTPC) only support up to profile 4.0 on H.264 material. Is there anything out or coming out soon that supports profile 5.1?

Problem is most 720p x264's (available on the net) are encoded with main profile 5.1

Example BSG episode floating on the net:

Video #0
Codec : AVC
Codec/Family : AVC
Codec/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Codec profile : High@L5.1
Codec settings, CABAC : Yes
PlayTime : 42mn 55s
Bit rate : 3043 Kbps
Width : 1280 pixels
Height : 720 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 16/9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Chroma : 4:2:0
Interlacement : Progressive
Language : English

As no one else is going to respond - Tvix, Popcorn Hour etc, LimHD200i - all will play high@5.1, but when there are too many ref frames, then you get some macroblocks in 1 or 2 places.

I have a lim, and most of my MKV's are high@5.1 and I get no issues (if I do find an offending file, I run it thru tsmuxer and change the level to 4.1, link below)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=134104

K

Thanks for the insight. Do these units play 720p/1080p equally well? 95% of my titles are in 720p (as is my projector) but it'd be helpful info.

When you say you run 'em through tsmuxer, do you do this after you watch the movie with macroblocks in 1-2 places (I get that on my HTPC every second or third movie as it is) to avoid it the next time or do you have some way of checking this before you watch the file?

Finally, how many, like what guestimated percentage have this issue? Thanks!

oldpainless68 has the limHD200i in a list of players that can do what you want...give the Tomacro threads a read and you will quickly conclude that anything made by Tomacro is a mistake to purchase.

You can also use tsMuxer to change the level of the file...I have read that changing the level doesn't do anything negative to playback...and it doesn't degrade the quality of the image as well.