[mythtv-users] Strange ALSA question

[Ian Forde]

Hi all -

I've pretty much given up on getting my onboard nforce3 audio chipset to
do AC3 passthrough, so I threw a SBLive 5.1 into the system, which after
severe pummeling, I've gotten to work with both PCM and AC3 passthrough
audio.

The problem is that with mplayer I can't get AC3 passthrough to work if
I specify an ALSA device.  So...

mplayer -ao alsa -ac hwac3, pcm_audiofile.avi
mplayer -ao alsa:device=default -ac hwac3, pcm_audiofile.avi
mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw-0.0 -ac hwac3, pcm_audiofile.avi
mplayer -ao alsa -ac hwac3, ac3_encodedvid.vob

all work.

mplayer -ao alsa:device=default -ac hwac3, ac3_encodedvid.vob
mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=0.0 -ac hwac3, ac3_encodedvid.vob

both fail.

So with that, I've got mythvideo to work just by specifying:

mplayer -ao alsa -ac hwac3, anyfile.{avi,vob}

The problem is in myth, I have to specify "ALSA:<something>".  I can say
"ALSA:default" for regular shows.  But if I want to do ac3 decoding for
HDTV shows, well... I need something that'll work in that field or for
Myth to have a default ALSA setting the same way that mplayer does.

Any ideas?

	-I