According to Creative's own FAQ, sound cards from the X-Fi and Audigy families are incapable of decoding Dolby Digital or DTS, due to the fact that "these functions are not supported at driver level in Windows Vista."
In Windows XP Dolby Digital and DTS work, daniel_k's drivers
made them work in Vista as well. This is only one example.
QUOTE]
don't you mean Dolby encoding?
I've never had an issue with decoding not working in XP, and the issues of decoding not working in Vista seems to be user-related (meaning not everyone across the board). Besides, the decoding thing with Vista - the ability was there early on, then it wasn't, and then decoding capability is back again as of the newest driver release - why support was temporarily removed in the Vista drivers is beyond me, there might've been compatibility issues; or, something surrounding the just announced X-Fi Titaniums (whice are the first X-Fi cards to have supported Dolby encoding capabilities).
Dolby encoding features have never been supported by the cards, and were never an advertised point - although the cards have been capable of Dolby encoding for the longest time (as the daniel_k drivers have proven possible). I'm not sure, but I think the issue with the encoding liscenses must have involved some kind of contract between Creative, Dolby and Auzentech (as the Auzen X-Fi Prelude has had Dolby encoding capability since day one as well). If this is the case, we'll probably never know.
@imperialreign
Is it stealing to get "the same damn thing" working in Vista too?[/
so - you mean to tell me that features that worked flawlessly in XP should work flawlessly in Vista? Thos are two completely different OSes. If that's your argument, then Creative should be at fault for EAX not working correctly in Vista, CMSS-3D not working correctly in Vista, lack of direct hardware acceleration in Vista, stereo down-mixing in Vista, 5.1 to 2-channel reduction in Vista . . . and countless other issues, right?
Wrong, blame that on the OS and the OSes maker - Microsoft. Creative can't be held accountable if all the features that worked in XP don't work in Vista if the OS doesn't directly support it or won't permit it. Creative has been making a non-stop attempt at getting all these features working correctly in Vista, and a lot of the time it's a hit or miss situation . . . which is why we've been seeing a lot of Vista beta drivers over the last year.
But, I'll give you the fact that Creative was slapping stickers on their products that read "works with Vista," and allowing online retailers to use "Vista ready" images as well - that can be considered confusing and misrepresentative if the product packaging still shows all the same features and capabilites related to the XP OS.
In this case, the Vista ready images should never have been there, or the product packaging should have been updated. I'll definitely give you the fact that Creative screwed up over their product packaging.
Edit: Last summer Creative, charged its customers a $9.99 fee for the privilege of legacy EAX support under Windows Vista.
As a comparisson...What if Microsoft charged us $9.99 for each service pack for XP for example? Would that be ok?
I drew the line over that as well - personally I thought that was rather low in itself, and uncalled for . . . that's why for the longest time I had been willing to direct users to the "free" ALchemy for Audigy software downloads instead of seeing people have to pay $10 for it.
They obviously havent lost enough money, when this is over youll probably lose your sig. I bet if Intel,Amd,Nvidia,western digital,seagate, and all other computer companies followed creatives lead you would be talking out of the OTHER SIDE OF YOUR FACE. Why not buy all new when you switch to vista, and if you dont like vista, junk what you bought, buy new again and go with xp.
and who'll take my sig? what a pointless comment, and pointless post . . . really.
So, should Creative lose all their money and go under - you mean to say that you won't bitch a single line when you start paying inflated prices for other audio cards, and you're not going to bitch when they start trying to corner the market, and you won't bitch when they bring they start trying to find ways to "force" users to newer hardware? Get real.
You mean you can tell me for certain that no other company in the tech industry follows similar business practices as Creative? That's a riot.
Most users had to upgrade most of their hardware to run Vista as well - but Creative is the only company that has taken flak for it. It's too demanding of an OS on older hardware, and there are still countless hardware drivers for new products that don't work right with Vista, as well as 3rd party software as well. But everyone only remembers one specific company.
Go take you arguments up with M$ if that's the case. But, oh yeah, it'll fall on deaf ears. Vista is so demanding of an OS that they're continuing to extend XP support until after the release of WIN 7 . . . what a great improvement Vista has been, huh?
:shadedshu
*knocks on wood*
+1 but highly off topic mate!
