CatBus said:

YanniD said:

An Oppo 93 and above will output 1080p24 from 720p24

Actually not entirely true. In the same firmware that removed ISO support on the 93, a bug was fixed with the side-effect that 720p24 could no longer be output as 1080p24. As far as I know, it's not fixed yet and may not be fixable, as I believe the two bugs are two sides of the same hardware bug. If you still have the ISO firmware, you're fine, but then you have the other scaling bug and any other bugs fixed since.

Thanks for that clarification: I wasn't aware that it was still an issue.

Needless to say, my Oppo 93 still has the ISO firmware that will get updated only when hell freezes over. The bugs are a nuisance, but do not outweigh the advantages of ISO/24p.

I believe Nvidia handles 24p correctly and the new Haswell HD5000 is supposed to correct that bug too, although they each have their own other issues, but I guess even PC have gremlins as a result of studio pressure. I still think a PC is the most flexible player as it is much easier to upgrade or modify than relying on a manufacturer who is more interested in selling you a new player each time.

The reality is that no (affordable) piece of electronic equipment is perfect or even close, so you just have to makes yer choice and pays yer price.

Since I'm not in the USA, I can't comment on which cheap Bluray players there can handle 720p24, but the Toshiba 3200, Audiosonic BR-5.1SW and Laser 1080 can, in my experience. However, both the Audiosonic and Laser do not support RGB digital output.

In retrospect, after considering the OP's reason for 1080p24 and the bugs in just about every player, I now tend to agree that having a 1080p24 encode would probably overcome many of those obstacles to suitable playback.

Don't you just hate it when the studios force you to do more work just to see something correctly?