I warned you that we'd get you eventually
You did get me on this, by the way... Not that I was ever a "bitstreaming true believer" anyway, but... My basement system works beautifully with no bitstreaming and vanilla analog outs. I do keep bitstreaming enabled upstairs on the HTPC, but mainly because it is already set up, and I'm not sure what the impact of altering that would have on my room correction and the "midnight mode" my receiver has enabled. Plus, it generally just works fine.
I switched my stereo video output over from the workaround to enable DTS Neo 6 through my receiver to JRSS months and months ago and I've never switched it back. JRSS does a perfectly nice job, and I have no complaints here.
I could, of course, recreate the room correction and "midnight mode" stuff inside MC, but that's a pain since it already works. And, then, I don't need to worry about decoding DTS-MA correctly.
PS. I will say this though...
How is decoding on the PC
easier? Granted, it isn't difficult either way, but... For Bitstreaming, I just have to plug in a HDMI cable (already done since that's how I get, you know, video to the TV) and turn one option on in MC's Options dialog. To accomplish the same thing with PCM out, I need to find an esoteric DLL file either on the Internets or buy another application, and then copy it manually into a weird folder location, with very little documentation. And, you know, I still need to plug in the HDMI cable.
I'd say that Bitstreaming is, for the USER, marginally easier. That was probably not always true, but now that basically any AVR you buy is going to support it, and any video card you buy (except certain high-end Nvidia ones, apparently) is going to support it... I don't know. Plug in and one switch seems easier. Just don't buy Nvidia cards.
Now... For the
programmer, it is probably a huge pain in the butt. But that's not "our" problem.