With some help from Realtek, PowerDVD will support 24-bit lossless audio
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted Jun 5th 2008 12:42PM
posted Jun 5th 2008 12:42PM
Some Blu-ray Discs offer the highest quality audio around, but up until now every PC solution has been forced to re-sample the higher fidelity tracks to 16-bit because of the lack of a protected audio path. Thankfully this is rapidly changing with the newer hardware coming out, and today CyberLink has announced that with a little help from Realtek's embedded ALC889 audio codec, PowerDVD will no longer be limited to 48kHz/16-bit and will now be able to deliver audio playback at 192kHz/24-bit. The bad news is that the free update to PowerDVD won't be available until sometime in the second half of 2008, and we're a little confused on what hardware we'll need in addition to PowerDVD to obtain audio bliss.
So I'll still need a new soundcard? Lame.
I have a motherboard with an ALC889A on it.
They advertised full rate audio very blatantly with it, "The ALC889A enables high quality Full Rate Lossless Audio for content protected media and support for both Blu-ray and HD DVD formats for an exhilarating home theater entertainment experience."
http://www.gigabyte.us/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=2636
That's all good and well, but I have no intention of replacing my GA-965P-DS3 mobo or buying a new soundcard.
Then no full rate audio for you...
"With some help from Realtek, PowerDVD will support 24-bit lossless audio"
And still be priced into the stratosphere.
Srsly, wtf.
Here's a kind of related question. I just downloaded a season of a TV show and all of the files are in VOB format. How do I convert them to something I can stream to my 360? Preferably for free.
Assuming the 360 does MPEG2 you should just be able to concatenate the VOBs together and slap a .mpg extension on the file. Otherwise, grab a free tool like Handbrake which will convert MPEG-2 into AVC.
Really? That's it? Just change the .VOB to .MPG on the end and it's ready to go?
I'll try that when I get home and see what happens.
It's almost that simple, but I should clarify a little.
1. DVD's call their titles VTS_01_0.VOB, VTS_01_1.VOB etc. So title 01 might have 5 parts running from 0 to 4 The reason titles are split up like this is a file limitation, in practice the bits are joined together.
2. VOB (video object) is a container format containing the MPEG-2 data. You should be able to rename it to .mpg and it can be read by media players.
3. Most DVDs are encrypted so VOBs are unreadable on DVD unless you transfer them to your hard disk first using a tool like DVD Decrypter which removes the content scrambling. It's easy enough to find this tool.
4. Once on your HDD, you can concatenate the files together from the command line or any GUI tool. From command line, syntax is like "copy /b VTS_01_0.VOB + /b VTS_01_1.VOB ...etc.... MyMovie.mpg". This will create from the parts MyMovie.mpg
5. You should be able to stream this to your console. But I don't have a 360 to confirm (I know I can from a PS3). If you can't you can google for a tool like Handbrake. This is a frontend for DIVX & AVC encoders which will turn your DVD into an .avi or .mp4 file which you can stream. You lose a bit of quality for reencoding the movie, but then it only takes up 1/5th the space so there are advantages too. If you have the time, choose AVC over DIVX because the quality is better for the same disk space.
It's pretty messy and a little complicated but ripping movies is quite possible with free tools. If you have money then a combination of DVD Decrypter and Nero 8 makes it much easier - rip to HDD and fire up Nero Recode to spit out an AVC file.
One clarification to what I said, you only need to concatenate the files from _1.vob onwards. The VTS_**_0.vob file is not mpeg data.
pointless in a digial mp3 world
pointless on cheap speakers
pointless to have hardware to play disks
So they finally mention something about fixing this. They took a year to even admit that they were downsampling and downconverting all hi-res audio.
And will this apply to DVDs with 24-bit PCM, or DVD-Audio, which also contain 24-bit tracks? I hope so.
I also hope they will work with Asus on their new Xonar HDAV1.3 and any other cards that finally include a protected audio path.
Right now, to get decent sound on my HTPC, I have to rip my blu-ray movies and play the remuxes in a player like MPC HC.
SO will this support bitstream output of all HD codecs(Truehd, dts HD MA)? or is this just support for loseless audio over PCM? IM guessing its the later as the baord would stil need to have a HDMI port to stream the HD codecs anyway. My gigiabyte board(about 1 year old now) had a sticker on it when i bought it saying it supported full BD and HD DVD audio but never understood exactly what that meant as the manual never mentioned anything about it.
No, it means you can get full quality analog from it (seriously). The software won't degrade the audio quality prior to passing it to the ALC889 chip (which converts it to analog).
How exciting! The vendor of a product with known bugs will ship fixes sometime later this year - for additional cost, Shoddy implementation of this technology for the htpc market has soured me.
Actually, I think they are giving this one away as a free update, unfortunately not until Q3/Q4. Sounds like the griping by the community was heard this time. Also I don't think you need to trash your current mobo. From Cyberlink's press release (go to "Company" > "Press Room" and read the June 5th press release, I think they are going to turn what's found on the hardware version of the ALC889 into a software codec in powerdvd 8 ultra. So as long as your mobo supports HDMI 1.3a(?) powerdvd should be able to send a PAP protected bitstream via HDMI.