After almost pulling the trigger on a new ATI 48xx card, I think I made up my mind that I'm going to wait for whichever of the Auzentech or Asus HDMI 1.3a soundcards come out first (tenatively the ASUS XONAR HDAV 1.3 if they stick to their July release promise).
Too bad there's this whole PAP DRM issue "crippling" ATI cards from DTS-HD/DD TrueHD audio. Who the hell arbitrarily decided "we're going to make your audio sound worse if you don't play movies back exactly as we say with the authorized hardware and software"
Unfortunately I'm one of those purists that doesn't want PowerDVD intercepting the audio first and decoding it to LPCM to send to receiver. I want my HTPC talking DTS-HD/DD TrueHD directly to my receiver!
It seems like the combo of PowerDVD, Nvidia GPU (exclusive to Auzentech) for audio plus a receiver that properly supports HDMI v1.3a audio is going to be the "perfect storm" of components for playback of BD and HD material in general.
Too bad there's this whole PAP DRM issue "crippling" ATI cards from DTS-HD/DD TrueHD audio. Who the hell arbitrarily decided "we're going to make your audio sound worse if you don't play movies back exactly as we say with the authorized hardware and software"
Unfortunately I'm one of those purists that doesn't want PowerDVD intercepting the audio first and decoding it to LPCM to send to receiver. I want my HTPC talking DTS-HD/DD TrueHD directly to my receiver!
It seems like the combo of PowerDVD, Nvidia GPU (exclusive to Auzentech) for audio plus a receiver that properly supports HDMI v1.3a audio is going to be the "perfect storm" of components for playback of BD and HD material in general.