What Dennis Barker over at Designtechnica has discovered about HDMI is the same obscure fact that keeps me hanging onto my nForce2 board for my HTPC - it will pass Dolby Digital 5.1 through its SPDIF-out. Unfortunately, Dennis is finding that not all HDMI chips are doing this at the moment...

"I was very troubled at the recent C.E.D.I.A. Expo to find out that one has to be careful about HDMI these days. Why do I say this? Both Audio and Video products currently on the market that utilize HDMI only passes 2.0 digital audio, and not full-blown 5.1 surround sound audio."

Awww crap. I just got a DirecTiVo for Christmas, too. I'd never even have wanted one if I'd have been able to figure out my IQ issues with my HTPC. Guess I maybe should've worked a bit harder on that, seeing as how the relationship between DTV & TiVo is now questionable...

"The combination of DirecTV's satellite service with products from subsidiary NDS , underscores News Corp.'s ambitions to spread its technology across its portfolio of companies globally. NDS also develops technology for BSkyB . DirecTV stepped down from TiVo's board last June creating speculation that the company would drop TiVo completely."

More info on the upcoming goodies from the DivX studios. Sounds uber-promising to me. They're compression is about as good as it gets, imo.

"The company on Thursday also previewed DivX 6, an upcoming version of its compression technology , which will allow consumers or film studios to fit an entire high-definition film on a standard DVD disc. DivX 6, which comes out in March, will appear in DVD players selling for about $100 later in the year."