Update on wifi: I haven't had much luck with the USB wifi adapters I tried. After a lot of searching I found a couple with (supposedly) the supported chipsets (double-checked the Linux and Debian Wiki's) but no luck. Apparently manufacturers update internals without changing the product label, which may be the cause - not sure. Anyway, no wifi but worse, during boot up the BDP2 seems thoroughly confused and decides to load the test playlist that is still lurking in the firmware. A reboot without the Wifi adapter inserted and all is fine again. So for now, back to the Apple Airport Express. Well, I was warned...
This said, is there an issue list I can report any findings to? I don't think it's very helpful to post on bugs which are already known.
EJ