Worried about getting lossless digital audio from your BD-playin' HTPC via HDMI, are you? Fret no longer, as
ASUS has just introduced your solution at Computex. Hailed as the "world's first HDMI 1.3a compliant audio / video enhancement combo card," the Xonar HDAV1.3 is both Protected Audio Playback Systems (PAPS) and Advanced Access Content System (AACS) certified, enabling it to pipe out bitstreamed multi-channel HD audio from Blu-ray Discs through a single cable. Yep, with some help of a special version of ArcSoft's
TotalMedia Theater, it's also fully capable of decoding BD titles and taking full advantage of Dolby TrueHD / DTS-HD Master Audio -- not limited to
16bit like previous solutions -- and just so you know, the firm is also offering up a Xonar HDAV1.3 Deluxe (shown after the cut) which allows users to get 7.1-channels of audio the analog way. Pricing? Pssh -- this
is ASUS we're talking about here.
[Via
DailyTech]
posted Jun 5th 2008 8:32AM
So, does that mean you have to have an hdmi cable for the video and an hdmi cable for the audio. Isn't the point of hdmi to have everything on a single cable?
It works by a looping system (as I found out on some threads online). So the hdmi output from the video card will go into the hdmi input on the sound card. The audio will be added to the stream in the sound card, then BOTH audio and video will pass from the output of the sound card to your TV or AV receiver.
Now, all I want is to know if the card will decode any hdmi stream into analog 7.1 audio. For instance, I now have a ps3 and a $1,000 Marantz Pre/Pro + Amp setup that lacks HDMI input. Will the Xonar be able to take the ps3 truehd or DTS-MA and decode it for me? It would be awesome if it could (not to mention save me $1000 on a receiver or $600 on a BD player).
perfectstorm: exactly. this gets a giant "yawn" from me. someone wake me up when we get a "home theater card" that will send both the audio & video over HDMI.
CC,
This is me waking you up. This home theater card does exactly that.
This card handles all of your audio processing.
Your video card handles all of your video processing.
You run your video card into this card then ONE HDMI cable from this card to your TV or Receiver.
Naaaaa, the point of HDMI is yet more of that BS mirage of 'security' (which is nothing but a gravy-train the regular paying punter is funding at great cost).
What this really is about is the costly, futile, ridiculous & unnecessary complexity of DRM/'security' striking once again.
As usual it amounts to little or nothing very practical but it is a pain in the a$$ for all of us regular consumers & it achieves absolutely nothing in stopping any real commercial 'pirates'.
Thanks 'industry'. Not.
But this is the road they are determined to follow.
I can't wait to see what fun the next disaster-in-waiting (blu-ray's new complex array of DRM/security) is for those unfortunate to suffer it.
Sounds like a decent set of features!
It'd also be cool if this card could also handle 3D game effects and output multichannel PCM over HDMI. Probably only EAX2 though, since it's not a Creative card.