A friend has pointed out that the entry
"mbstring.http_input PHP_INI_ALL" in Table 1 on the mbstring page appears to be wrong: above Example 4 it says that "There is no way to control HTTP input character conversion from PHP script. To disable HTTP input character conversion, it has to be done in php.ini".
Also the table shows the old-PHP-version defaults:
;; Disable HTTP Input conversion
mbstring.http_input = pass *BUT* (for PHP 4.3.0 or higher)
;; Disable HTTP Input conversion
mbstring.encoding_translation = Off
