I am not sure on the etiquette in these forums as the question I have is regarding HTPC and I know this site is used for speakers, but a lot of you guys are HT junkies and hopefully some of you have some nice HTPC rigs.

In a new HTPC you can have a Blu-Ray player and the new WinDVD has full support for True HD and HD-DTS. Current sound cards do not have HDMI out but they are coming out with them probably end of Q2 2008. So lets say I want to go that route. There are HDMI video cards, and will be HDMI sound cards. That leaves me with 2 HDMI cables from the same source. Isn't that a bit redundant? From my understanding the PC is outputting the HD video over HDMI through the vid card and then outputting PCM True HD through HDMI from the sound card. No receiver I know of will give you separate HDMI inputs for audio and video.

Am I missing something here, or are the sound card companies and the video card companies going to have to learn to play nice with each other and run the HDMI audio and video through one card and one cable input?

Any thoughts or input would be greatly appreciated as I would love to have a fully functional HTPC!

Thanks,

Greg

The video cards, at least the ATis, put out audio over their HDMI. I don't think anything but the very newest (9x00 series) NVidias do that.

The ATI's I saw on the website (HD3000 series) don't appear to have an HDMI out. The Nvidia 9800 definitely has an HDMI out...but it is also a $600 card

Is that really the only solution right now to have true 1080p and trueHD or HD:DTS audio through a HTPC?

Just a completely unhelpful post from me, but don't worry about the HTPC post. You will find that this forum is full of people willing to help out in a whole slew of areas. I've asked many questions about HTPC stuff on here in the past. Nobody is going to bash you or anything. We don't roll like that here....

Actually this is a topic I too have been wondering about. When I built my HTPC I was thinking that I would need a separate audio card for decent sound out.

I would think/hope that if you are doing your decoding on the receiver, that you would be able to do passthrough of both audio and video using the same hdmi connection.

By the way, I have hdmi out on my amd690g based mobo graphics so I expect something in the ATI line of cards will have hdmi out.

I have no idea whether or not it will pass audio and video and what exactly it will pass. I need to read my documentation again, but last time through I didn't find it very helpful.

Hi Greg,

I am also waiting for a “single card” solution for my HTPC audio. As posted above there are “workaround” cards available now but as far as I know none of them are capable of full HDMI 1.3 audio connectivity. If you haven’t found them already these links might help you or hopefully anyone else looking into this.


First you might want to read this:

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/1306/2/dts_hd_and_dolby_truehd_on_your_pc/index.html

Right now it appears that digital rights management has us by the …

Also this post might be helpful on what‘s best for now:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=13460020&highlight=hdmi+1.3#post13460020





Finally if you’re not already I recommend that for the latest news you monitor this thread:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=794029&highlight=hdmi+soundcard


Personally I am waiting until all-in-one cards that support everything are available. Then I will still probably wait for other people to work out the inevitable bugs. Right now I’m sticking to analogue especially since most of what I’m watching on the HTPC is 2.0 Anime anyway.

Hope this helps someone,

Dean

Can HD be recorded thru cable yet without having to buy an OEM full system? I know there is an ATI card that does it, but you can't buy it separately last I looked.

No I don’t think there is any good non OEM way to do it yet.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/03/12/ask-engadget-hd-how-can-i-record-premium-content-on-my-htpc/

Sounds like the Hauppauge HD PVR may be the best workaround in the near future. But I haven’t really been keeping up on this since I don’t get a big selection of HD content from my provider.

From the specs on the ATI HD 3800 specs:

Integrated Digital Outputs – Enjoy your digital content the way you want to, with built-in HDMI that includes 5.1 surround audio for big screen entertainment

looks like 5.1 is the best you are going to get for now. Not having read the links posted above, my bet is that it is a hdcp integration issue.

FWIW, I found a 2005 MS white paper on drm in Vista. Holly crap!! No wonder Vista takes so long to boot and even longer to start a movie. Crypto keys, handshakes and hardware chain verification up the wazoo.

I think I'm going to change my vista startup sound to jingling keys...

Wondering why ATI might be putting an audio chip on its graphics card? The white paper suggests its a drm requirement.

Oh, and my favourite line from the paper? "While it is not required to implement this blah blah, it is suggested that this is a good way for the hardware vendor to show its commitment to content protection."

Dean: Thankyou for your post and links, they are helpful and I hadn't checked all that out yet. I agree that waiting for an all-in-one card (brings me back to the ATI all in wonder days) is the right solution. I will monitor the forums. The new Nvidia 9800 platform has an HDMI out right on the card, but I haven't been able to verify through documentation or customer reviews whether that passes audio and supports TrueHD or DTS:HD. As soon as I learn I will pass along the info.

Fred: Thank you as well for your post. I saw the same literature on ATI's website and got excited because that line clearly states in text that it has HDMI out, but then all the images of the card and the I/O specs don't show it at all. If Nvidia's new boards have them I know ATI will follow soon.

I am only running a 5.1 setup, so if I can get HDMI out that supports 5.1 out of ATI or Nvidia I will be happy, but I will hold off on putting any real money into my HTPC until then. For now, I'm running optical out from the mobo to optical input on the Denon. Last night I put in my first 5.1 DD DVD into the HTPC, and even though I ran it through that optical, the Denon was still recognizing it as 2 channel...I thought optical would transmit the 5.1. Could it be that I am using VLC instead of a more formal WinDVD or PowerDVD?

In the end it's not hurting me because I have a PS3 hooked up through HDMI that handles the DVD playback fine, but my end goal is to have it all through the computer.

Thanks again!

Greg

Greg. Take a run down to your local BB and take a look at the card. Given that AMD/ATI have put hdmi out on their igp chipsets and it is in the spec for the 3800 I would be very surprised if it wasnt on the 3000 series cards.

FWIW, that MS white paper stated that the initial release of Vista would not support True HD and HD-DTS. That suggests that there were/are significant challenges in passing it through the pc in a 'safe' (as MS likes to put it) manner. There is a possiblility that MS still dosn't have the drm code in place to do this reliably. The paper did say that handling both video and audio posed significant challenges (they are authenticated and DRMed through separate channels/processes.

Fred

Is this all in an anti-piracy effort? Sure DVD's are pirated regularly right now, and I guess it pays to be future-proof, but nobody realistically right now is going to be pirating these things. It's no problem to get the security settings off the Blu-Rays, but nobody has bandwidth to really download 25 gig images, and these pirating kids don't have the money to be buying $500 BR burners and the media to go along with them...

I suppose that will change in time, but in the mean-time the people that HAVE the money, the HTPC hobbyists, are suffering.

Yes, yes it is. Like they care about their customers.

Greg, I have the same 2 channel S/PDIF optical problem as you do. It’s been such a headache I just gave up and stayed with 5.1 analogue connections for now.

If you do an internet search for something like “only getting stereo from sound card with S/PDIF” or some other similar wording you will find this is a common problem. In theory all you should need to do is set your sound device and playback software to pass thru S/PDIF, AC3/DTS or however your software lables it. However, it didn't prove that simple for me.

Wish I could be more help,

Dean