Got it. I'm more thinking about an ever-so-slightly expanded BDP-1

I'm keen to hear some input from your technical guys on the questions above. I really do want to understand a lot more about the division of labour between player and processor with respect to media files.
Also, what is the issue with ALAC? The reason why this is a focus for me is because I do have a Mac (in fact, I have several), an iPad and an iPhone. I don't want to have to rip my audio collection twice. Ripping to ALAC allows me to have one "master ripped file" which I can copy to iTunes and to the media drive for a device such as the BDP-1. iTunes has the fantastic ability to then automatically transfer lower res (say 320kbps) versions of the master files to portable devices. Yes, one could rip everything to ALAC and then convert the whole lot to FLAC but that sounds like a pain to manage. I wouldn't have thought ALAC so difficult to support given it is open to all.