drngr said:
I've seen one poster who claims the AAC quality was atrocious for him, while most people seem fine with it. Up to 384kbps can be selected.
Unless I missed it, you haven't mentioned what your video sources are going to be. This is critical to deciding on the most appropriate solution, because if you're capturing from something like a cable box then 5.1 PCM does you no good. Most cable boxes will output only stereo if the HDMI handshake tells them that DD 5.1 isn't supported.
I plan to capture BD bits from my PS3 where the ripping programs cannot "crack" the disc due to newer protection methods, ala recent Fox BDs (BTW, I have a View HD 1x2 splitter to undo HDCP and tis working so far as my AGP box is recording the signals from my PS3, BD player, and so on). Sorry I didn't mention this in my first post (wanted to get the main questions out of the way first), but my video sources are mainly MP4s and m2ts (H264 codec), as Windows Media Player can play any MP4 file (even 60fps) fine, while VLC is choppy with MP4s but can handle m2ts videos flawlessly. 384kbs AAC for the Hauppauge is pretty good, better than 111kbs on the AgpTek box I currently have. I'll be listening to that sample to determine if the Hauppauge has good enough quality for my needs, as I spruce up the sound anyway and increase the bass and such (of course, I also upsample the audio to 5.1 as a WAV).
Thank you for your help! I was getting nowhere with my questions on Amazon, and I'm glad I got a membership here to answer my questions.