Please excuse my ignorance.

I am looking to setup an HTPC connected to my existing Home theater receiver and HD TV. For audio I was going with something like winamp using Steve Monks' Kernel Streaming plugin so that I can pass a stereo signal to the Home Theater receiver, bypassing the sound cards processing. I understand some sound cards have passthru; however, my understanding is that the player and the card have to work together to make this happen. Question 1 is if I hook up s/pdif out with winamp and the kernel streaming plugin, I hope I would get digital stereo into my receiver. Question 2 is what PC based HD DVD blu-ray player and sound card (and maybe video card) will allow pass thru a 5.1 signal to my receiver?

I asked the following question for the POWERDVD blu-ray player and they said , "we do not do that"
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I am thinking of buying a blu-ray disk player and one of the Powerdvd solutions. I want to connect the s/pdif digital audio out directly to my home theater receiver. This means I think I want to bypass MS Windows audio subsystem known as the kernel mixer (or k-mixer). Does your player have a option to do this?
vcyashpal Reply 2008/01/21 18:30

Thank you for contacting CyberLink Online Customer Support.

In regard to your issue, we regret to say that the feature you are trying to use is not supported by any of the CyberLink products.

We regret the inconvenience you have encountered so far.

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http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=982243

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=892863

summary:
Hirez lossless digital multichannel audio from Blu-Ray/HD-DVD is currently not available on the PC. Thank the gods of DRM, the inholy Hollywood, and a number of hardware/software manufacturers for that.

What you do get is:

• Analog 5.1 channel lossless audio downsampled to 48kHz 16 bits using unknown algorithm
• Digital audio as allowed on spdif, i.e. 2ch hirez or lossy 5.1 DTS 1.5mbit/Dolby digital

I dont know what your possibilities are if you rip the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD using AnyDVD HD, then use something like the *.mkv container, and some other video-player that has the capability of lossless hirez multichannel audio.

If the downsampling of PowerDVD is done nicely and you have an audiocard with decent D/A-converters, I dont see the big problem from a technical side, but it is really irritating that those people are doing their best to make customers A)forget the entire format or B)go for the improved quality of illegal and/or questionable content.

-k

Some ATI video cards include HDMI audio along with the video; they should also have hardware acceleration for the HD codecs. That should be HDCP compliant, if your receiver can handle HDMI audio. Otherwise, you may need to run a whole bunch of audio cables from the sound card to your receiver's multichannel analog inputs. You can't do better than PCM stereo or DTS surround through normal S/PDIF. (After reading the linked threads, well, part of them, maybe you'll only get 16/48 from PowerDVD regardless. Well, that still should sound better than compressed DD or DTS which are also just 16/48)

Something called "AnyDVD" may help get around some pesky DRM restrictions. My video card was not HDCP compliant, but AnyDVD took care of that.

By the time you've bought the drive, extra software (because the bundled version is too limited, and you need to get around HDCP), and maybe a remote, you may have been better off just buying a hardware player.