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MSI intros new motherboard with True Blu-ray audio support
If you're building out your own HTPC rig, add the new MSI X58 Pro-E motherboard to the list of contenders for your dollars. The board packs an Intel X58 Northbridge / ICH10R Southbridge combo alongside Realtek ALC889 audio to deliver "True Blu-ray" audio. It's not terribly clear exactly how the marketing-speak plays out, but between the 24-bit, 192kHz audio specs and our cynical selves, we'd wager that this is all about sending Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA downstream via LPCM rather than bitstream. All things considered, that's not a bad way to go (and not without precedent), but we'd really like bitstreaming support for HTPCs that's a little more streamlined than the current offerings; we want to see the fancy logos we paid for in our receivers light up, after all!
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.
