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today on my video blog we're going to unbox the azente xfi home theater HD so

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this is the very first sound card or

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well I think there's one other one but this is the first one to do it correctly

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for support for Dolby true HD and DTS HD

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Master audio so what that means is when you're playing back a Blu-ray movie

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there's absolutely no down sampling you are getting the audio exactly as it is

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recorded most sound cards are not able to do that so let's get this unboxing

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going on another thing it's got listed on the front is that it's support it's

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got support for HDMI 1.3 HD audio pass

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through so here we go this is an xfi

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card so that means that it's using the creative xfi chip and let's get it

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started here so oh on the side this is even labeled for us check that out so we

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got the bundle pack and then we have the xf5 home theater HD so why don't we do

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the bundle pack first we just yeah we'll do that okay so let's find out just

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exactly what comes with this sound card

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it's a very expensive sound card so it better come with some good quality audio

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and some good accessories here so first of all we have our breakout cable so

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this is where you're going to get all of your standard analog connections so you

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got your side front rear sub line in and

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mic ports and those all come out of kind of a serial looking Jack on the sound

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card okay so then we have an optical cable this is kind of a sweet looking

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optical audio cable because yeah it's clear that's that's

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pretty neat actually okay next we have a

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DVI to HDMI adapter okay so it comes

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right with one of those that's pretty awesome and then we have an HDMI cable

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this looks like it's about a 6t cable 6t HDMI cable and then we have oh this is

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interesting okay so sorry that was a toss link fiber optic digital cable and

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and then this is the adapter for it so there we go now now we've clarified that

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okay so what else do we find in here here's your installation CD so that's

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got your drivers on it you're probably going to want to download the latest drivers for something like this anyway

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then you've got a little pamphlet including a 10% discount at uh

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cyberlink.com so you can grab power dvd9 which you will need for blu-ray playback

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it's not done natively in Windows Vista or Windows 7 and then we will find a

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quick installation guide so wow that doesn't seem all that quick but it's in

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multiple languages so let's focus down on what we're actually going to be using

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here which is English for me anyway so that just shows you where to plug in all

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of the stuff to the back of the card that's very interesting let's get the card out now all right so here we are

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pulling out careful the sound you are about to hear is extremely real that is

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an awesome warning and I love it okay

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here is the sound card itself the home theater HD quality assurance seal let's

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take that right off quality is no longer assured no I'm just kidding that's not

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how it works okay there is the back of

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the card so the first thing you notice about this is that it is a PCI Express

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1X card now you can use a PCI Express 1X

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card in any PCI Express slot whether it's 1X 4X 8X 16x so that's really good

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flexibility there here is the analog IO so that's where we plug in that breakout

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cable we saw before this is

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the headphone out or it's right there so

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does this card actually have an amplified headphone jack is the question

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that I should be asking myself uh yes it

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does this has an onboard headphone amplifier so that's terrific if you're

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using headphones that have um a high

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impedance okay so digital out is right here then we've got our HDMI out and our

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HDMI in so what that means is from your video card you're going to go DVI out

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into the HDMI in here and then it's going to add the audio so that's where

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you're getting the lossless audio algorithms added basically it's it's um

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it's an encryption device basically so you can't do it with any previous sound

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card because that's where it's all done is right on the sound card then HDMI out

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will carry the video from the DVI the audio that's been added by the processor

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on the sound card out to your receiver so let's have a look at the front of the

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card here so here's where you're going to find your front plugins so if you

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were to plug in any um I believe creative has like a front

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Bay that you can plug into that uh right here we've got a spit if in so if you

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have to plug one of those in that'll go there at the top there's a few little

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fingers and to be perfectly honest I'm not sure what those are for and then

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right here this is one of the features that azex cards are very famous for so

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this is a swappable stop U socket for

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your opamp so what that means is that you can actually take this out if you

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prefer a different one to put in there so a lot of guys are doing out with

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these cards anyway that's pretty much it for the xfi home theater HD thank you

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for checking out my video blog