Auzentech HomeTheater HD Preview: Bitstreaming True HD/DTS-HD MA
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Let’s...Get...Busy
Pardon the early 90s reference, it’s the first thing that came to me and I didn’t want to use the word “unboxing” on this page; but that’s effectively what it is.
While the ASUS Xonar HDAV comes in a box you’d expect from a motherboard company, the Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD is a bit more polished. You’d expect it would be for a sound card that costs $250.
Inside the slipcover you have two separate boxes; one holds the card and the other has all of the cables and driver disc.
The setup works like this. You run a cable from your video card (or video output on your motherboard) to the Auzentech card. It combines the digital signal with the audio output from the sound card and sends it down a single HDMI cable from the card itself. Auzen provides a DVI-to-HDMI as well as a regular HDMI cable to aid you in this process.
You also get an analog break out cable for ins and outs.
The X-Fi HomeTheater HD is a full height PCIe x1 card:
Despite its length there's no retention notch for well designed motherboards that include a compatible clip. There's a lot on the card, including an interesting set of jumpers:
The first jumper block lets you configure how the video signal gets sent to the X-Fi HTHD: either video HDMI input on the back of the card or over the PCIe bus. Apparently NVIDIA and Auzentech have been working on a way to pass video (or audio) over the PCIe bus instead of an external cable. This feature doesn't appear to work on any NVIDIA chipsets today, but it may at some point in the future (or with a future NVIDIA chipset).
The heart of the X-Fi HTHD is Creative Labs' X-Fi audio processor. It's most definitely overkill for what we're using the card for, but you've gotta justify that pricetag somehow.
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Mastakilla - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
"One question regarding roadmap for motherboard bitstreaming over HDMI. I've heard opposite rumours - LPCM over HDMI can be discontinued because of the need to pay for license. Example - new ATI Radeon 5xxx series are going to lose LPCM over HDMI. Is it true about ATI?"I am very interested in this too...
I'm planning to buy the ATI Radeon 5xxx and was kinda hoping it would have better support for Audio than the older ATI hardware
@ Anand: You mention that future mainboards will have better audio support, do you know anything about the future videocards? Cause the mainboard is not something I would replace soon...
Baked - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
Indeed a PS3 Slim would be the better option. I got an eye sore just reading the failure page.kleshodnic - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
Try ripping a Blu-Ray ISO to a FAT32 partition...joos2000 - Monday, September 7, 2009 - link
Eh, rip it on your PC and store it on your media streaming NAS. Easy enough.leexgx - Friday, September 4, 2009 - link
below only relating to if you Play them as an file or over the network (as its going to be AC3 you lose something but norm house sound systems you not notice it)use TVeristy and stream TS or M2TS over the network useing the PS3 media center handles 1080p norm fine (H.264 10GB files) But does not support DTS audio needs converting to AC3 that takes 10 mins
DTS does not seem to play from files get no sound (same on power dvd 9 i have to use popcorn audioconverter to convert DTS to AC3 then use TSmux to convert the MKV to TS then my video card handles the video output {wish rel groups would do every thing in TS and AC3 in 1080p}) yes you can use VLC (new one is Crap media player classic is better) it uses all CPU no Video HW decode
elpresidente2075 - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
Try running the Indy 500 in a Chevy II...