trigomen :
Hey guys i have this setup, i bought a home cinema kit 5.1 thinking it was just connect to tv and the sound will do 5.1. But it is stereo ;/
Now i bought a sound card to connect pc to blu ray, i use spdif but one more time it only passes stereo.
Really don't know what to do anymore. Any help? thanks
Here is my setup:
http://imgur.com/MDUl7zj
S/PDIF can only handle the following formats:
Mono, Stereo, AC3 (Dolby Digital), and DTS.
S/PDIF cannot handle multichannel audio beyond stereo (two channels). Transmitting more than two channels over S/PDIF can only be accomplished by first encoding those channels into a bitstream, either Dolby Digital or DTS. The only way to do this in real time on a PC is with a sound card that supports Dolby Digital Live or DTS Connect.
If you are trying to receive digital audio from your BluRay player and play it through speakers connected to your PC, this is a waste of time. Most consumer sound cards do not support decoding digital audio, only encoding it.
What you should have is the following:
PC -> HDMI -> Home Theater
BluRay -> HDMI -> Home Theater
Home Theater -> HDMI -> TV
Home Theater -> Speaker Wire -> Speakers
If you have a modern graphics card in your PC you can use the HDMI output as an audio target as well as a video target. This means that you can have both a regular monitor and a TV connected to your PC. You may also have your existing sound card and headset (if you have one) as well as your 5.1 configuration.
I had a very nice setup just like the one above, worked wonderfully. I could use my 5.1 headset (attached via 3.5mm jacks) and monitor (attached via DVI-D) to play games at my desk, and then swing around to my couch to watch movies on my home theatre which was connected via HDMI.