As you point out, obie_fl (and as you and I have both mentioned several places lately - seems to be a hot topic these days), HDMI 1.1 and 1.2 will support up to eight channels of PCM audio, which means that HD-DVD and Blu-ray players can decode the audio but leave it in the digital domain. I assumed that AudioBear was looking to pass the audio bitstream from the discs to the processor like we do with DD and DTS currently, which of course won't work until HDMI 1.3 is a reality (whenever that might come to pass).

Every time I hear about the "analog hole" and efforts to plug it, I find myself smiling cynically. Didn't we just get through watching two high-res audio formats drift into niche-market oblivion while waiting impatiently for them to be allowed to offer a digital output? I guess that we can be thankful for the shift from "mandatory analog" to "demon analog" because now we all have at least a 5.1 analog input on our receivers and processors (and in more and more cases a more future-friendly 7.1 input) to let us get at these new audio formats while the digital signal path finishes growing up.