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03-Mar-2009
A word on Realtek HD-Audio
Over the past month it has become apparent that none of the Realtek players (1073/1283) launched up to now will ever be able to bitsream lossless HD-Audio (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA). This news was broken on MPCClub amid much hyperbole aimed mostly at Xtreamer.
Whilst it is obviously wrong that some players have advertised this capability when it will now not be delivered, we question the seriousness of the problem for most people and the very narrow reaction to it, aimed primarily at Xtreamer.
It should be made very clear, this is a hardware problem with all Realtek chipset players.
With this in mind it strikes us that Xtreamer is one of the least guilty in some ways simply because it is one of the cheapest. If we had paid $300 for a DViCO Tvix 6600, or $280 for a Fantec MM-FHDL we would be much more aggravated at this news than if we'd bought the Xtreamer at $135. The question would arise, 'why did I pay more?!'.
iboum published the correct HD-Audio capabilities for the Realtek players many months before the problem was officially confirmed. Despite this we continued to recommend Xtreamer and other Realtek players and will continue to do so. Outside of very technical users lossless HD-Audio is a rarity. DTS is becoming more prevalent so we deem that essential, but for most people TrueHD/DTS-HD MA are a very long way from necessary.
The market for Media Players is very young. There are a lot of products being launched, many of them with questionable specifications or with features to be added by firmware at a later date. Whether we think this is right or wrong, it is fact and is one good reason why a site like iboum is (hopefully) very useful.
As with the Realtek players, we will continue to always publish the most accurate specifications.
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