hmmm is this over priced or what? :crazy:

[SSK]

was keeping an eye on the new asus xonar and scan have now got it on there site for pre order...now the price has taken me by surprise and am now considering is it really worth all the hassle in me building a htpc with hd playback when i can just go and buy a blu ray player for the price of this sound card or better still get a ps3 and have some light gaming chucked in...options options tho the pc build now starting to seem out of my pocket

[staffsMike]

Do you need a soundcard like that in an HTPC?

An on the new ATi graphics cards, probably the 780G mobo's too (not sure though) offer Audio over HDMI.

I agree the PS3 makes a compelling arguement though, probably go the PC route myself but if you like console games it might be the way

[SSK]

Do you need a soundcard like that in an HTPC?

An on the new ATi graphics cards, probably the 780G mobo's too (not sure though) offer Audio over HDMI.

I agree the PS3 makes a compelling arguement though, probably go the PC route myself but if you like console games it might be the way

still not decided on whether i will build a htpc or use my existing system tho was looking into specing one if i was going to

and with regards to the mobo and gpus do they do uncompressed hd audio which will allow a reciever to recognise hd sources such as dolby truehd and dts-hd?

[SiM]

nah the graphics cards and onboard video cards don't do this properly yet and there is some software limitation in powerdvd... so for now the best way to do it is by analog... however, the new intel g45 chipset and the onboard nvidia video chipset that are coming out soon are meant to support this afaik

[staffsMike]

Can read a little about what is on offer here
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3338&p=2

no treuhd etc.. though.

[SSK]

nah the graphics cards and onboard video cards don't do this properly yet and there is some software limitation in powerdvd... so for now the best way to do it is by analog... however, the new intel g45 chipset and the onboard nvidia video chipset that are coming out soon are meant to support this afaik

do you know roughly when they will be released?

[SSK]

Can read a little about what is on offer here
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3338&p=2

no treuhd etc.. though.

thanks for the link...shame that it doesnt support the formats tho

[rufeo]

i think it's not too bad.... the price will probably come down a bit, as it seems that scan has been 'marking' the prices up on pre-order item i.e. gfx cards lately. the d2 costs 90 quid and the d2x is 110. this new xonar seems to have taken a leaf out of the auzentech prelude, as from the specs it looks like the OPAMP are swappable.... plus it's the only mainstream soundcard that offers uncompressed hd audio.

a ps3 might be a good idea.... you can use it as a htpc with all the featues you need and also get some gaming on it too

[Lourdes]

nah the graphics cards and onboard video cards don't do this properly yet and there is some software limitation in powerdvd... so for now the best way to do it is by analog... however, the new intel g45 chipset and the onboard nvidia video chipset that are coming out soon are meant to support this afaik

Analogue has the same limitations.