Future set-back for HTPCs?

[UnicronI]

Eventualy a great deal of HD-DVD/Blur-ray disk will come with either/and dolby's and DTS's HD sound formats. Now correct me if i'm wrong but so far those signals can only be sent via a HDMI. Here in lies the problem. We cant send both the audio and visual signal down 2 source and be received as 1 single?

Would soundcard and graphics card developers perhaps combine thier efforts and make a card with both in mind that gives out a single HDMI signal!

 

[ocdwhiteboard]

can they not be sent out as analogue audio like they can with normal DVDs?

 

[PeteD64]

It's been thought about.

I've seen pictures of HDMI equipped graphics cards that include a digital audio input. You connect your sound card to the graphics card so it can combine sound & video via HDMI.

Now all you need is a TV that will accept it's native res from a PC over HDMI.

Oh and an AV amp that will accept the HDMI process the surrond sound & still pass on the video to the TV without losing HDCP or corrupting the signal in some way. From what I've been reading this doesn't work very well yet.

 

[baldrick]

Why not run 1 HDMI from the sound card to the amp and another from graphics card to the TV!?!?!

 

[UnicronI]

Why not run 1 HDMI from the sound card to the amp and another from graphics card to the TV!?!?!

Because only 1 signal can be sent at a time!

Doesnt look to good then?

 

[PeteD64]

If a manufacturer develops an HDMI equipped sound card it could work.

I was a bit confused yesterday with what I said about the amps. I think some of the problems people have now is connecting a PC to an amp via DVI->HDMI & then HDMI to the display. It doesn't work too well because there's no HDCP from the PC. With a proper HDMI equipped graphics card this should be resolved.

 

[jameson_uk]

Now correct me if i'm wrong but so far those signals can only be sent via a HDMI.

I dont think this is correct. My understanding is that they should implement HDCP (copy protection) which is only available on digital connections. Both HDMI abd DVI-D are digital connections but only HDMI carries sound.

I guess we are at least 18 months away from any settled HTPC setup but I would imagine that either HDMI will be used with no audio (same as you can do with scart) and audio will be output via soundcard as now or we the hardware may be good enough to do the video / audio sync on the PC and we will have to get a HDMI type converter from which we seperate the digital audio and video parts.

 

[sideysid]

It's been thought about.

I've seen pictures of HDMI equipped graphics cards that include a digital audio input. You connect your sound card to the graphics card so it can combine sound & video via HDMI.

The Sapphire 128mb 1600pro HDMI is the only card available at the moment, the 256mb version is expected over here soon.

The process of linking up the SPDIF input, to these cards will not carry Dolby True HD audio (when it comes available) through the HDMI, as this can not be carried through SPDIF.
In time we may see HDMI graphics cards with sound processors onboard that will be able to do this.