The relevance of this I2S discussion seems to be most important for Multichannel. On many forums one can read people trying to access an internal I2S bus to get a handle on non-encrypted MCh audio.
HDMI interleaves SPDIF within the Video signal, and as far as I know, it is only legal to lift an 2 channel stream out into SPDIF, or re-encode Mch with Ac3 into Bitstream over SPDIF.
While the music industry gave up on encrypting red book audio, they have successfully locked away MCh Audio behind HDCP.
And this creates an un-real situation where we have to accept that the Mch´s source (Blueray/DVDA/SACD) digital content needs to be shipped to an external DAC via HDMI and nothing else. (Except an Oppo where a decent DAC is built in).
In the redbook CD world, one could have at least argued that the DAC should be left within the transport for reasons given in previous posts. For Mch there is not such an Option (except the dis-continued OPPO). The non-perfect SPDIF signal is now interleaved with a video signal and encrypted. That seems to be the worst possible solution.
I know of no Blu-ray player with USB-6-channel output. I hear that there are certain professional add-ons to a PC that could generate a 6 channel USB output – but I believe only because somebody did not worry about checking all the licenses needed. There is a product that converts HDMI into SDI and from then onwards audio extraction is easy, but only because the vendor believes that he makes this device for copyright owners only.
So unless I overlooked something, we are stuck with Mch audio in a very uncomfortable situation (locked in HDMI interleaved with Video and HDCP) and I do not see a lot of complaint about this situation. Only the ones that want to find these I2S headers seem to worry.
HDMI interleaves SPDIF within the Video signal, and as far as I know, it is only legal to lift an 2 channel stream out into SPDIF, or re-encode Mch with Ac3 into Bitstream over SPDIF.
While the music industry gave up on encrypting red book audio, they have successfully locked away MCh Audio behind HDCP.
And this creates an un-real situation where we have to accept that the Mch´s source (Blueray/DVDA/SACD) digital content needs to be shipped to an external DAC via HDMI and nothing else. (Except an Oppo where a decent DAC is built in).
In the redbook CD world, one could have at least argued that the DAC should be left within the transport for reasons given in previous posts. For Mch there is not such an Option (except the dis-continued OPPO). The non-perfect SPDIF signal is now interleaved with a video signal and encrypted. That seems to be the worst possible solution.
I know of no Blu-ray player with USB-6-channel output. I hear that there are certain professional add-ons to a PC that could generate a 6 channel USB output – but I believe only because somebody did not worry about checking all the licenses needed. There is a product that converts HDMI into SDI and from then onwards audio extraction is easy, but only because the vendor believes that he makes this device for copyright owners only.
So unless I overlooked something, we are stuck with Mch audio in a very uncomfortable situation (locked in HDMI interleaved with Video and HDCP) and I do not see a lot of complaint about this situation. Only the ones that want to find these I2S headers seem to worry.