HOME THEATER PC UPDATE

Done some more work on my Home Theater PC, for a look back at the journey, here are some old blog links:

My Encoding Method for HTPC/Xbox360 streaming

Original HTPC components

Finishing touches

This setup worked great, gave me BluRay playback, was fully HDCP compliant for 1080p playback. Updates to the computer since then are:

VIDEO CARD

MSI ATI 4650 video card with native HDMI, fully HDCP compliance, 512 megs ram and 7.1 audio support

This video card is superb for video playback but it was the promise of 7.1 audio that really caused the upgrade. I have an 7.1 audio system fully setup and the new Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master AUdio sound tracks on bluray discs are lossless 7.1 channel. So i THOUGHT putting this card in was going to give me playback of these top of the line audio formats but..... i was wrong. Turns out, it only supports 8 channel LPCM which is a major downgrade from TureHD or DTS-HDMA. Due to Protected Audio Pathway which i guess is for audio what DHCP is for video, you need a special audio card to do the new BluRay audio formats. Overall i'm real happy with the video performance but the fan is louder than i would like.

BLURAY PLAYBACK SOFTWARE

I've ditched PowerDVD in favor of Arcsoft Total Media Theater 3 Platinum.

It's a no nonsense playback package that integrates nicely into the Vista Media Center front end, something powerDVD never was able to do. So now i don't need to exit media center to playback bluray. It's also cheaper that PowerDVD and it also supports TureHD and DTS-HDMA audio playback if you have the appropriate hardware. PowerDVD also supports this but the card they're backing isn't out yet and has an unknown price.

AUDIO CARD

Now the last piece i need to pickup now is an audio card that does PAP so it can play back Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio. The HDMI cable will need to come out of the video card and into the audio card, then out of the audio card to the receiver. It all seems pretty redicilous and i'm not sure why ATI has the capability to do these HD sound formats but doesn't have PAP to do them. I guess it's a licensing thing, i really don't know. But the bottom

There are only TWO cards, one available and one available by the end of July that have the ability to add these HD audio formats to Home Theater PCs. The ASUS card is $150, It's an Xonar HDAV1.3 Slim which supports many different flavors of PCI. It is supported by Arcsoft Total Media Theater but not PowerDVD and thus far has been the only card on the market to solve the audio problem plagued by Home Theater PC builders.

The new card about to hit the market is Auzen X-Fi HomeTheater HD . This card isn't out yet and price is unknown right now but it should be out by the end of the month . Whether or not Arcsoft's player will support it or not is also still in question, PowerDVD is however backing this card so if it's significantly cheaper, i may need to go back to PowerDVD. The other issue i have with this card is that it's only going to be available in the mini PCIe connector which is a problem for me. My motherboard only has one of these slots and it's currently being occupied by my DVR card.

In the end, i hope having two cards on the market will help bring prices down. It seems rediculous to me that a video card powerful enough to play back 1080p bluray is only 50 bucks but the audio card to to TrueHD and DTS-HD costs 150 bucks. It's just nonsense, there's not enough competition in this marketspace right now. In fact, building an HTPC is now no longer worth it over buying a BluRay player unless you're doing other things with it besides bluray playback. I do, we record TV to it and also stream TV and Movies off the media server. But you're looking at 300 bucks just in audio, video and playback software and you haven't yet bought the rest of the components you need to build the computer. This experience has reminded me a bit of the days when I used to PC game, there's always a new piece you need to get :lol: So anyway, i imagine at some point i'm going to need to pull the trigger on one of these cards , actually the Asus card so i'm hoping for some good price drops in the last quarter of the year.

if you are interested in an overview of how rediculous the encryption is on bluray and all the components to support it, AnadTech has  ab excellent article here