I'm thinking down the track I'll replace my aging DVD player with a DVD-ROM for the Media PC, but I'm concerned about losing my nice digital surround. If I get a soundcard with a SPDIF port, does anyone know if I'll be able to configure GBPVR to output the requisite signal so my amp will understand and decode?
As long as the decoder you are using supports it, you will be fine. PureVideo supprts DD5.1 with the Gold package and adds DTS with the Platinum package. AC3Filter works as well, I believe.
There are also methods using Cyberlink decoders that don't require the ac3filter Search the forums.
I'm doing this with onboard sound on my motherboard, send a digital signal to my receiver and a stereo signal directly to my tv (if's its an ac3 dignal, then the tv doesn't get it - but this doesn't bother me since that's what the receiver is for).
Awesome - thanks guys
I'll do some more trawling around for specifics, but I just wanted to make sure it was broadly possible.
Yep - definitely do-able. Once you have adjusted the standard audio properties to use the spdif output, you simply have to adjust the properties of whatever audio decoder you have specified in the gb-pvr config to pass the surround information directly to your amp and bypass any down-mixing it may want to do.
FFDShow also has built in support for outputting AC3 via SPIDF. The nice thing is that you can also mix regular Dolby Surround or Stereo encoded files so they actually output an AC3 stream. Makes it nice so that every show always uses the center channel of your system.
whurlston Wrote:As long as the decoder you are using supports it, you will be fine. PureVideo supprts DD5.1 with the Gold package and adds DTS with the Platinum package. AC3Filter works as well, I believe.
Correcting myself here. I read a post on avsforums that stated the PureVideo decoder will pass all multichannel audio formats on SPDIF with all versions (bronze/gold/platinum). The before mentioned support per package is if you want the sound card to do the decoding and do multichannel analog out.
To get DTS out to be decoded by an external receiver you'll need a sound card capable of bit-perfect output through it's optical or spdif output ie Windows doesn't resample to 48MHz with K-mixer.
Most Via Envy 24 based cards do this and I believe some realtek HD audio on board chips do this too. I use a chaintech AV-710, cheap as chips but does the job.
I have been doing AC3 out to my DTS and 7.1 Onkyo HT907 system since late 2006. Output via Digital Coax. Would prefer a Tos-link cable, but my current HTPC only has the Digital Coax SPDIF right now.
It works great with WMP 11 in XP SP2. But I am just now trying out the latest GB PVR and everything seems to work great except for AC3 output.
I have tried using the FDDshow filter in GBPVR and I think there was another setting in there that I tried. But I don't get the AC3 output within GBPVR.
EDIT: I just checked... looks like since installing GB PVR yesterday, my AC3 output doesn't work in WMP11 anymore. So looks like I need to get my AC3filter working again in WMP11 and then try again in GBPVR. Odd that everything AC3 was fine until I installed GBPVR. Not sure why that would make a difference.
Also enabling FDDshow in GBPVR seems to now cause it to crash in a few minutes of trying to playback AC3 avi videos.
Any ideas? I am still searching this forum for answers.
I just installed the k-lite pack which includes ac3filter and ffdshow.
In AC3Filter I have use SPDIF set.
Then in ffsdhow audio I have AC3 and DTS set to SPDIF.
Then in GBPVR Playback tab I have Audio Decoder set to AC3Filter
I don't know if this is correct, but I tested last night and I was getting Dolby Digital to my receiver though Digital Coax and still getting stereo to a pair of headphones connected to the audio out of the pc - which is what I was after...
EDIT: so not actually sure if the ffsdhow stuff is needed since I don't think I'm using it.