HERCULES Fortissimo III Gamesurround

Anyone had experience with this card?

Especially in terms of hooking up to H/T decoder via optical out.
From the manual it appears that the Optical out only works in the following circumstances:
a) Data transfer to Mini-disc etc
b) Audio signal transfer from PowerDVD EX software
c) Pass the internal S/PDIF through without processing

Thus can I assume that the Optical out does not work for games, mp3s other stuff?

All I want it a sound card that uses optical out ALL the time for ALL sounds and doesn't cost $AU4xx.xx+. What is it going to take to get this?

All SoundBlaster cards disable the coax/optical out if the file has DRM; FYI.

DRM?

I'm sorry, DRM refers to 'Digital Rights Management' meaning that if the file has copy restrictions, the driver will automatically disable the digital outputs. While I am not positive of all sound cards doing this, I suspect all do, similar to video cards disabling a S-Video out during DVD playback.

P.S. How are you liking your new Dell server?

Well that's a right pain in the arse.
However it still should work for games, mp3s don't you think.
I generally play CDs through a player rather than my comp.
I can understand them taking that line though.

As for Arrakis (Dell) the order has been placed but it has not arrived. I just got a bit excited and put the specs in my sig cause I can't wait to get it. Next comes the DSL link for the web server (and some other stuff) and use the Dial-in capability of the ISDN router to dial-in from home.

The fun part will be deploying a it as a DC when I haven't done much domain admin work for about 3 years (I liked NT4). I think I might go and dig up the appropriate "Unleashed" book and start reading.

It should work fine for games, mp3's, etc.

What OS are you going to load on your server, Windows NT/2000/Linux?

I got an email from Hercules Support and they said that it will render any sounds made by the computer. Thus I'm going to print that email and keep it with the receipt.

It's going to come preloaded with Win2k Server w/10 lic.
Like I said, it's been 3 years since I did any major domain work so this could be fun.

Win2k Server Unleashed will be bought and read.