I am trying to pick components for a HTPC which will do "everything", and I am feeling so disappointed with the video/audio/entertainment industry. Hopefully, you can tell me that it is not so bad as my impression is right now.
There is so much discussion around not downsampling audio before passing it on to the receiver over hdmi. My understanding is that this is all caused by copy protection of high quality audio. But...
Why does the PC have to decrypt the sound at all? Why not just pass the bitstream untouched and encrypted on to the receiver over hdmi (as it was stored on the blu-ray disk)?
Is it so that AACS does not allow for different encryption (keys) of audio and video?
If so, then my question is... Can a video stream be "just passed through" as well? My TV can receive H.264 streamed (DVB-T only, I guess...).
Continuing with a more remote question if there is no "yes" to the above...
This business has been able to define end-to-end audio formats that receivers can interpret. Why is this not the case for video and TVs? AIUI there are only three formats on HD video disks (Blu-ray and HD-DVD). Still too much development on the video area (24p, deep color, etc.)?
I can see that you need to convert to support older TVs and receivers.
There is so much discussion around not downsampling audio before passing it on to the receiver over hdmi. My understanding is that this is all caused by copy protection of high quality audio. But...
Why does the PC have to decrypt the sound at all? Why not just pass the bitstream untouched and encrypted on to the receiver over hdmi (as it was stored on the blu-ray disk)?
Is it so that AACS does not allow for different encryption (keys) of audio and video?
If so, then my question is... Can a video stream be "just passed through" as well? My TV can receive H.264 streamed (DVB-T only, I guess...).
Continuing with a more remote question if there is no "yes" to the above...
This business has been able to define end-to-end audio formats that receivers can interpret. Why is this not the case for video and TVs? AIUI there are only three formats on HD video disks (Blu-ray and HD-DVD). Still too much development on the video area (24p, deep color, etc.)?
I can see that you need to convert to support older TVs and receivers.