[mythtv-users] 5.1 sound from DVD, stereo from encoders

[Nick]

On 24/06/06, Jim Minihane <MythTV at minihane.tzo.com> wrote:
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> My system is almost complete. 4 PVR-500s, 8 D10-100s. Frontend is a small

Is HDTV not available in your area? Using a PVR-500 will limit you to
SDTV resolutions and analogue audio.

> desktop P3-933. My question is… Can I get DD5.1 output when playing DVDs and
> stereo (Dolby prologic) when playing recorded material? I'll probably have

Yes you can. You just need to ensure your chosen DVD/media player is
configured to output via the SPDIF in pass-through mode so that the
receiver does the decoding of the audio. Normal recordings from the
PVR-500 cards contain analog PCM audio which will be passed in that
format to the receiver to play.

> an HD receiver for the plasma screen and it will have digital output. What
> are my options to integrate these systems. I haven't got the AV receiver

MythTV offers a 'AC3 to SPDIF passthrough' mode such that if you are
recevieing HDTV broadcasts that include Dolby Digital audio, the audio
will be passed directly to the receiver via the SPDIF without any
decoding on the PC. Any analog audio will be passed as PCM audio to
the receiver as normal.

If you are intending on getting HDTV in the future, or will use it
outside of MythTV with the D10-100 which Google tells me can be HD
(see the caveat about using PVR-500 capture cards above), an HD-ready
receiver makes sense. If you are only using standard definition TV/DVD
you may well find that the Myth PC does as good a job at resizing
video as the receiver might (there's a thread regarding Faroudja
scaler performance on this list today).

> yet. I'll get whatever sound card I have to. Can I get a card with SPDIF out
> and pipe all sound from my frontend through that and have the receiver
> decode DD5.1 or Prologic as it sees fit?

I would think any Linux-supported soundcard with SPDIF output will be
sufficient. My two main MythTV systems have SPDIF onboard and both
work perfectly with my receiver using optical SPDIF connections.

Nick

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