Strangeness with HD audio

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First, a little background info:

I upgraded to an ASRock H55 motherboard with an Intel CORE i5 660 Clarkdale CPU a couple of months ago and thought I had everything set up the way it was before to enable bitstreaming HD audio to my Onkyo preamp/processor.  A short time afterward I experienced a problem with the pre/pro (unrelated to the HTPC) that had been manifesting itself for a while until I finally got tired of dealing with it so I took it to a repair shop to have it checked out.  In the meantime I reinstalled my venerable B&K Reference 30 pre/pro back into my system along with a cheap Monoprice HDMI switcher with digital audio switching since the older B&K did not have HDMI capability.

I just got the Onkyo pre/pro back a couple of weeks and reinstalled it in my system.  I noticed that I was no longer seeing the HD audio indications when playing back Blu-Ray movies from my server using PowerDVD 10.  After much trial and error I was unable to get HD audio to work with PDVD 10 as it had before.  I went through all the motions of downloading the latest drivers and uninstalling and reinstalling whatever I could think of.

I then decided to try PDVD 11 on a whim so I downloaded the trial version and, lo and behold, I now had the option to bitstream HD audio once again.  Unfortunately, for some strange reason, PDVD 11 would not respond to any MCE remote commands.

Running out of ideas, I decided to check out Arcsoft’s Total Media Theater 5, so I downloaded the trial version and set it up.  I was able to get HD audio with no problem and it responded perfectly to my MCE remote commands.  This is all well and good but I’m still at a loss as to why my HTPC would no longer allow me to configure HD audio with PDVD 10.  I’d consider upgrading to PDVD 11 if it weren’t for the remote command issues.  It sucks that I might have to shell out cash for TMT 5 when I’ve already paid for a program that used to work fine but now refuses to do what it once did.

[mikinho]

Have you opened PDVD10 within Media Center without a disc in the drive (or virtual drive) and configured HD Audio?  PDVD10 (and even PDVD11) will “forget” its audio preferences when a non-HD Audio disc is played and you need to manually configure it again.

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I have tried opening PDVD10 from within Media Center as well as a standalone app on my desktop.  I just select the movie from within Media Browser and it automounts the image and then prompts me for which playback app I’d like to use.  I’ve also tried it from the Pictures and Videos listing as I have my server linked to both listings. 

The only media I’ve played since reinstalling PDVD10 have been Blu-Ray rips from my server.  I rarely use it for anything but Blu-Ray playback.  I have tried numerous Blu-Ray iso’s and the option for selecting the HD audio is simply not there.  I never had any problems setting it up on previous occasions.  It showed up right away in both PDVD11 and TMT5 so I can only assume I have all the right drivers installed.  It’s one of those things that will drive a person bonkers trying to figure out what’s going on.

[rcase13]

Are you playing ISO files or MKV files?

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