Blocking of Hardware Audio signals by Microsoft/AMI  

I described earlier the experience of losing access to the PC's Hardware Audio signals like CD-IN and Composite Audio when switching from Windows XP to Windows Vista.

This OS switch disabled critical functionality used by TV Tuner cards like Dvico to allow usage of the Composite input from the Cable Set Top Box to the PC in order to allow encrypted signals which the user is paying for to be viewed on the PC, through the Composite Video 3 pin interface.

In addition, this problem prevented the audio being output to the PC Speakers being segregated into 2 preliminary input paths, Wave and CD-IN or Wave and Line-IN, which allowed these 2 paths to be audio-volume balanced, as would be the case in any living room between the TV and the Stereo Receiver.

I was forced to retreat back to a Windows XP installation to regain this Hardware Audio functionality.
At the time I thought this was just another Bug in Vista.

(As a side issue, I already mentioned the addiitional Vista Bug in the additional failure to implement the Ctrl-S sizing feature in the new SNDVOL.exe which was in the XP SNDVOL32.exe applet, which is even more necessary in the Vista applet version.)

However, I recently had occasion to upgrade my Asrock motherboard from the BIOS of a year ago to the current BIOS and encountered the identical symptoms.
I had to retreat back to an older motherboard BIOS version to regain this Hardware Audio functionality.


This sequence of events indicates that there is a clear policy being driven by Microsoft and their lackeys at AMI to block these Hardware Audio signals from the PC.

If Microsoft is responsible for this, the manager there responsible should be Fired.
I want to know if this is an announced policy, and if so, what is the reason for this ?

When you see a response like this, it is obvious you are hearing from someone who works Public Relations on forums like this and does not in any way represent the point of view of the User.

CD-IN and Composite Audio/Video are still critically important signals which must continue to be received by the Microsoft/Intel PC, for the reasons such as TV input which I have already detailed.
I do not see how the PC industry can move forward faster by removing existing and critically important functionality.

The bottom line is that the Cable companies will continue to pump analog NTSC signals through the cable for years, along with the newer digital ATSC signals (which are encrypted and require the Cable Set Top Box or CableCard/OCUR external USB device to watch). That means that the analog tuner within the PC TV Tuner card can easily tune to these analog NTSC signals through user PC keyboard input or PC TV Tuner card software scheduler.

The PC TV Tuner card can tune to these signals directly with the raw Coax cable directly from the wall inlet. The same PC TV Tuner card can also receive the decrypted Cable Set Top Box which the user has used the Cable Set Top Box Remote to select (a much more difficult and tedious operation which cannot be controlled from the PC keyboard or PC software scheduler).
The Dvico card for instance allows the user to select in the Scheduler NTSC channels 2,3,4...125, or Composite, interchangeably.

It is a weird realization, but after now trying the competition PC Tuner software from Hauppauge, Avermedia and Asus (Arcsoft), it is clear that the Dvico is by far the best user interface.
And there are serious problems which remain with the Dvico software user interface.
However, if anything the TV Tuner software industry as a whole is declining, not improving.

It is completely unacceptable to take away working functionality and it should be considered outright Theft and Fraud to steal people's money who are buying the PC on the assumption that certain functionality is in the product when in fact the functionality has been secretly removed from the product.
Has Microsoft/AMI made any public statement about this removal of critical PC Hardware Audio Input functionality ?
Some prosecutors call this commercial conduct Bait and Switch...

Are you saying that you have heard or read somewhere that removing access to Hardware Audio signals from the PC is an intent of Microsoft and AMI ?

The Dvico FusionHDTV5 card has ClearQAM capability.
However that yields only around 8 TV channels (local must-carry and PBS primarily). On the other hand, NTSC channels 2-70 are available also for direct tuning by the ClearQAM capable card.

Nevertheless, removing access to functionality from the PC without notifying the customer should be considered a crime and should be prosecuted by state and federal prosecutors.
Otherwise, we might as well legalize Bait And Switch.

To continue defending the malperforming PC TV industry, that is masochism.
Unless this is well paid public relations work...

I have described in detail the continued importance of these Hardware Audio signals such as CD-IN (Dvico), Line-IN (ATI), and Composite Audio/Video (output by most Cable Set Top Boxes) in the PC TV Tuner capability.

It seems that maybe Microsoft realized the importance of Relative Volume balancing in Vista and now has modified the audio in Vista to allow a slider bar in SNDVOL.exe for each application which generates audio.
Perhaps they believe that by removing these hardware audio signals from Windows XP, they can stampede users from XP to Vista and make huge amounts of money on customers being forced to buy the newer OS.

There is one problem: Bait and Switch is illegal and it is also illegal to remove functionality which the user has already paid for, out from under him,
all without the customer being notified or any broad public statement of this intent.

Ultimately these signals just represent a variety of routes through which users who buy their own PC can route audio from external equipment into the audio mixer chip of the PC.
And I have not heard of an audio mixer chip which did not maintain the multiple hardware routes to mix signals into the audio.
The fact that CD-IN originated as a signal routed from the CD reader device does not mean that must be the continued external device (external to the motherboard) for which this signal continues to be used.

For instance, the ATI TV Tuner card used Line-IN, the Dvico card used CD-IN, and thus both could co-exist in the same PC and allow the volume of each to be balanced with individual sliders in SNDVOL32.exe . Otherwise, all audio is lumped in together in the Wave input to the PC audio mixer with no ability in Windows XP to volume balance them individually.

It is interesting you mention that, because when I looked at the existing active thread names in this section for this round of commentary, the only one I thought I might read was one which claimed his wife was questioning why he wanted to buy a Blu-Ray reader or burner.

I myself was in that dilemma of not having a good reason to justify that purchase recently, especially with the price of 1.5TB disk drives at $129 as a storage medium.
I had to research and buy a single Blu-Ray movie outright before I could justify it to myself.

I absolutely did expect Vista to support my Hardware Audio and that is the first device I tested with Vista. When it failed I switched back immediately to Windows XP.

It has never been an option for any Real User of PC TV Tuner cards to use WAVE as the route for Audio. There is no way to volume control the Wave route through a single applet, like SNDVOL32.exe, without breaking out Tuner card volume into a separate slider bar such as Line-IN, CD-IN, AUX, MIC etc.

The only reason you may not be aware of this is that none of the people who claim to be users here on forums like this actually use these products. Most of these people are advertising/sales/PR workers who go home to a real TV and their only exposure to PC TV is what they read in the glossy brochures of these products.

I doubt that 99% of the users of the PC would know what Audio Routing or VST Plugin's are, or would ever have any use for them.

As I already stated, I have seen what Vista does and it interferes with the operation of CD-IN and Composite-Audio (those are the only ones I checked) which Dvico's own software uses to perform 2 key functions, volume control and receiving the decrypted ATSC signal from the Cable Set Top Box.

The standard HD audio chips in the PC continue to maintain the multiple external Hardware Audio inputs to the mixer. CD-IN, Line-IN, MIC etc.
However, the Windows Vista kernel also goes out of its way to block access to the Composite Audio, which is not fed directly into the mixer chip.
There is clear intent and malice here, to block these Hardware Audio signals.

Are you saying the newest motherboards no longer have PS/2 connectors for the keyboard and mouse ?
I bought my current motherboard about 8 months ago and the PS/2 connectors are still there.

I wonder if the music business was involved in this. It is noticeable that Composite Video was not interfered with by Vista or the newest AMI BIOS.

Everyone was notified that ISA Bus was being phased out. And even then, that was a very gradual progression, motherboard by motherboard, over several years.

SCSI Zip drives were never very popular.
On the other hand, practically everyone watches TV.
The PC TV has assumed the role of the TV and PC Monitor (at least the bottom right corner of it) is the new TV screen.
Thus by definition, the functionality I am talking about could never be considered fringe, like most of what is discussed on forums like this by advertising/sales/PR operatives.

Wrong. The motherboard I bought 8 months ago has all those connectors on it. Floppy Disk and the CD-IN connector on the motherboard.

Wrong. My 8 month old motherboard has all PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors.
In addition, the Soundblaster does continue to maintain the CD-IN in products like X-FI XTtreme Audio, which is still on their roster.

In fact, here is how Creative at www.creative.com describes it:
"5. Aux In connector Connect an analog CD cable (available separately) from the analog output on an audio device like a TV tuner to this connector."

After encountering this Hardware Audio blockage by Microsoft Vista 8 months ago I did discover that particular menu buried under the Control Panel I believe it was.
Note this menu is separate from the normal volume control applet SNDVOL.exe, which it is clear is a big change in Vista over XP's SNDVOL32.exe.
(That is, there is clearly a lot of work Microsoft did in this area, and thus what this code does and does not do is no Microsoft developer accident of omission).

That menu, not the normal volume control applet SNDVOL.exe which I have been discussing, was necessary to even change the audio level in Live viewing.
However, as I stated, when TV was recorded and played back which had Composite Audio as the audio source, the recorded content file contained No Audio.

This is how I described the problem on 10-29-08, 12:08 PM:
"There were serious problems receiving and Recording the audio from that STB input in Vista Ultimate about 6 months ago, so I abandoned it and went back to Window XP SP2, now SP3)."

The Microsoft manager responsible for this failure should be Fired.

Composite is the 3 pin interface which comprises 1 video pin and 2 audio pins.
The term Composite Audio refrs explicitly to the 2 audio pins in this pinout.
Composite Video refers to the 1 video pin in this pinout.
Strictly speaking, the term refers to the Video pin only, but that is not the reality pinout one encounters in consumer electronics products. Usally this trio of pins are found and implied.

Component Video uses 3 pins for the video, and is itself usually paired off with the 2 audio pins (left and right), for a total of 5 pins.