While mp4 videos look great on the N800, they seem to persistently stutter once a minute, every minute. The severity of the stutter varies from a momentary glitch to several seconds of freeze-frame. I've watched a number of different videos and in each case, you could set your watch to it--a stutter a minute.

These videos are mp4s ripped from Handbrake at 512kbps average bitrate, with aac sound at 96kbps, but I got the same results at 256 (with video quality unwatchable). Framerate is same as source (NTSC film). I have no other programs running. Taking the N800 offline seems to have no effect.

Does anyone else have this problem? I've searched these forums and found no mention of it.

What player are you using? If you haven't already tried it use Mplayer.

I tried mplayer. Video played okay, but there was no sound at all. I didn't try it long enough to see if it stuttered.

I've tried every single video player available and NONE of them would play the MP4 files I ripped using Instant Handbrake on my Macbook Pro.
My N95 plays them flawlessly, but the N800 stutters in sound and won't display video.
Even launching mplayer from the command line with the cache set to 1024 it stutters and craps out.
Now for the truly strange part....I remember ripping and watching an entire season of 'Wild Wild West' (the original not the craptacular movies) on my N800 on an international flight with the original shipping firmware and using the EXACT same method/settings I'm using now.