OK, helps to know it won't work in 1080p.. I wish that it was more prominent when you went to download themes for ES that it told you if you needed to increase the split or that it simply won't work over 720p. I think that a text warning when you go to install those themes would be simple, appropriate and prevent others from making my mistake.
I edited /boot/config.txt and uncommented HDMI lines as follows, leaving the group alone but changing mode to 4 which corresponds to 720p
hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=4
When combined with 384M split this allows the system to boot and work well using tronkyfran, with only a little bit of the sense that the images are being scaled. So, I definitely appreciate the help! Hope this helps anyone else who falls into this rathole.