5.1 surround sound

[mmatheny]

What set up are you guys using to get surround sound out of your PVR? I just found out that apparently all TVs down sample any 5.1 or greater surround sound signal coming via any connection other than the cable connection to 2 channel - meaning if I have a DVD hooked to my TV and output the sound of my TV to my RX, the TV downsamples the 5.1/7.1 input from the DVD to 2 channel - you have to use an AV RX as the switching center to get 5.1/7.1 throughout!

[whurlston]

HDMI video to TV.
7.1 Analog audio to receiver.

The TV should be an/the endpoint in a chain. Source -> Receiver -> TV. Or:
TV <- Source -> Receiver.

The only exception should be the TV audio out to receiver for the TV's internal tuners.

[BigMoose]

I take an optical out from the PVR to the reciever using AC3 filter within GBPVR. It annoys the wife that she has to turn the stereo on for normal TV - my ideal would be if the HDMI sound and the the optical SPDIF worked at the same time. Then DD/DTS for things that warant it and the TV sound for the news etc...

[psycik]

I take a digital coax to a receiver - and also use the "headphone" out port to the tv - so it will do stereo or DD/DTS depending what is turned on.

AC3Fiter controls it.

[carpeVideo]

I take an optical out from the PVR to the reciever using AC3 filter within GBPVR. It annoys the wife that she has to turn the stereo on for normal TV - my ideal would be if the HDMI sound and the the optical SPDIF worked at the same time. Then DD/DTS for things that warant it and the TV sound for the news etc...

Just put that on the wishlist the other day - I can do it with a graph and using a tee filter on the sound but it would require secondary sound filter settings in GBPVR.

My setup for regular tv is using ACfilter or ffdshow filter via HDMI to the TV but with DVDs or HD 5.1 streams I use the nvidia audio decoder with spdif pass through realtek audio.

[serafis]

I take digital SP/DIF co-ax from the PC to Onkyo 7.1 AV receiver, using FFDShow Audio Decoder with AC3 and DTS SPDIF passthru (for AVIs) and PureVideo with passthrough (for DVDs). I tried encoding PCM stereo to 5.1 / 7.1 with FFDShow too, but I found that the AV receiver actually does a much better job of turning stereo into surround sound in PLII Ex or Neo 6.1 than the PC does. Video outputs are HDMI to projector and TV-out (composite) to CRT TV.

If I just want to watch TV, I usually just use the TV by itself, rather than the PC, so don't have to bother about turnign the stereo on..

[Pob]

I use the cheap option - on-board motherboard audio, with four or five speakers connected direct to the PC, and ffdshow or Purevideo to route the audio to the speakers. Both ffdshow and Purevideo do a good job of extracting the older Dolby surround from standard TV transmissions, and when playing DVD's or H264 content I get 'proper' surround sound.
The tricky bit for me was to get dolby surround from downloaded TV shows encoded in XviD or DivX, as the MP3 decoder in Windows (Fraunhoffer?) was always taking precedance. I used DSF Manager to lower the merit of this decoder, and increase ffdshow. Now I get good surround even on the downloaded TV shows.
I like the idea of the PC doing everything, video and audio, without the need for any further hardware. The only fiddly part of my method is getting the balance between the speakers correct - you either have to use the speakers own volume knobs, or the software mixers, but it did'nt take long for me to get it just right.