High Bitrate Encoding (Score 2)

A friend of mine recently purchased an MP3 player (I'm not sure if it's one of the two that was reviewed... it might have been the MP-Trip), and it has a big problem decoding anything above 192kbps encoding. The player barfs and decides not to decode it at all. I've heard that it could have been a cheap hardware decoder onboard, but I'm not sure.

Anyone have similar problems, or know if these two mp3 players can encode anything above 192? Personally, I try to encode at > 160 bitrate, because if I run 128k mp3s out from my PC through my relatively high end stereo, it sounds like utter crap. If I were to purchase an mp3 player, may it be portable or set-top, would probably be run through my stereo at one point or another, and if it sounds like crap, I won't buy it.