The three missing things (holy trinity?) are/were:
- Hardware deinterlace
- 3D support
- Optimised software HEVC support
Deinterlace is done. 3D is possible and not on the Foundations to-do list, but one of their developers is likes 3D so it will probably happen from personal interest at some point. Software optimisation for HEVC is not likely to be redone because it's a large effort and requires a level of hackery in ffmpeg that will never be accepted upstream, which is the design requirement for all code now. Tests show the non-optimised HEVC support in LE11 images is sufficient for SD media, but not 720p/1080p. So if you really need HD media, either stick with LE9.2 or bump up to an RPi4 with native HEVC hardware decode.
Thanks for bearing with me and explaining the current problem.
I can see what the development team is dealing with.
Thanks again for the info and I hope you guys have a great holiday.