Psacanli: At the moment, I won't. I wasn't kidding -- my DAC doesn't accept a 176.4 signal, and my Empirical Audio USB interface doesn't either. If your dac takes a 176.4 sigal (many take anything up to 192), then you're OK. Or like Alex said, you can rip a DVD and play it on your DVD player.
How to proceed from here, and be safe for a while, is a good question. It's complicated. Although many recordings are made at 96, as you've pointed out things are moving forward. Not only do you need a dac that accepts 44.1 (CD)/88.2 (Linn)/96 (DVD etc.)/176.4 (Ref Recordings)/192 (HD audio)/..., you also need a dac that has the right kind of input connections (SACD, 24/192 PCM, HD audio) and might need to handle DRM. Also, you need to get the signal into the dac with as little jitter as possible. Low and mid-fi receivers (like my Denon 4308) can handle all these formats and connections, but I haven't seen any high-end stand-alone dacs that can. We'll probably see more dacs with all the right features in a year to two.
I've heard that HDMI 1.3 has relatively poor jitter. Too bad. Otherwise it would be great connection on a DAC: supports all current formats (including SACD, uncompressed 7.1 channel 24/192 PCM, the new HD formats like Dolby-HD, etc.) and DRM issues.
Since reading your initial post, I've been looking at DACs that take 192 and 384kHz signals.
How to proceed from here, and be safe for a while, is a good question. It's complicated. Although many recordings are made at 96, as you've pointed out things are moving forward. Not only do you need a dac that accepts 44.1 (CD)/88.2 (Linn)/96 (DVD etc.)/176.4 (Ref Recordings)/192 (HD audio)/..., you also need a dac that has the right kind of input connections (SACD, 24/192 PCM, HD audio) and might need to handle DRM. Also, you need to get the signal into the dac with as little jitter as possible. Low and mid-fi receivers (like my Denon 4308) can handle all these formats and connections, but I haven't seen any high-end stand-alone dacs that can. We'll probably see more dacs with all the right features in a year to two.
I've heard that HDMI 1.3 has relatively poor jitter. Too bad. Otherwise it would be great connection on a DAC: supports all current formats (including SACD, uncompressed 7.1 channel 24/192 PCM, the new HD formats like Dolby-HD, etc.) and DRM issues.
Since reading your initial post, I've been looking at DACs that take 192 and 384kHz signals.