[bluray]

no actually, i don't understand.
Im more confused than ever now.

Lets say I have a bluray film which haas Dolby TrueHD. All i want is to hear the audio track on the bluray disc, the way its meant to be heard.

here's what it says on the manual of my Onkyo AV receiver (which is 5.1):
'• 2-channel linear PCM (32–192 kHz, 16/20/24 bit)
• Multichannel linear PCM (up to 7.1 ch, 32–192 kHz, 16/20/24 bit)
• Bitstream (DSD, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio, DTS-HD
Master Audio)
Your Blu-ray Disc/DVD player must also support HDMI output of the above audio formats.'

So - if i've got this right -
The decoding of the TrueHD MUST occur in the GPU, for it to then send that via HDMI to the AVR, for the AVR to output the Sound as TrueHD.

have i got that right?

If it is decoding by HTPC, it is not bitstreaming because it will send TrueHD to AVR as PCM.

If it is bitstreaming, your AVR will get un-molested TrueHD. AVR will do all the decoding, and then processing it!