With some help from Realtek, PowerDVD will support 24-bit lossless audio
Some Blu-ray Discs offer the highest quality audio around, but up until now every PC solution has been forced to re-sample the higher fidelity tracks to 16-bit because of the lack of a protected audio path. Thankfully this is rapidly changing with the newer hardware coming out, and today CyberLink has announced that with a little help from Realtek's embedded ALC889 audio codec, PowerDVD will no longer be limited to 48kHz/16-bit and will now be able to deliver audio playback at 192kHz/24-bit. The bad news is that the free update to PowerDVD won't be available until sometime in the second half of 2008, and we're a little confused on what hardware we'll need in addition to PowerDVD to obtain audio bliss.
