Any one using HDMI Audio? 5.1

[rhansen5_99]

I am in a spot of trouble. I recently installed an ATI 4850, and have this hooked up to my hdtv through HDMI.
I am running Vista 64 and the catalyst 8.7 Drivers

After a few hours of research I found that you need the latest Realtek HD audio drivers to install the HDMI audio device correctly (???)

Anyway I downloaded the 1.99 version of these.

The problem that I am having is that I want to run HDMI from the computer to the TV and use the TV's optical out to the receiver, however no matter how I try windows will only see the HDMI as stereo as an option.

The TV is a samsung ln t4661f. So basically I would like to know if any one using HDMI--> TV even has an option of 5.1 or greater, and if so what step am I missing.

BTW the stereo works great, but I got the card to get 5.1 channel to the receiver to do some HD-DVD decoding.

FYI I am using Power DVD and the media is outputting 5.1 or greater just hitting the receiver as stereo

Thanks

 

[capable heart]

My guess is that either...

1.) The TV is down-mixing the audio from the HDMI into Stereo, for some reason (not sure whether that can even be changed). There might be a setting for that in a menu somewhere, but there is no guarantee that will fix things, because of ...

OR

2.) The optical audio output on the TV probably isn't capable of sending out an uncompressed 5.1 audio signal. (As opposed to being a still encoded bit-streamed Dobly or DTS signal.)

 

[rsd]

This thread on AVS has a lot of information as to how to get the drivers installed/setup.
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1041621

That said I highly doubt your tv can take HDMI audio and send it out via optical. If your receiver cannot take HDMI audio, why don't you just do optical out of your PC to your receiver and just use HDMI for video to your tv? Its one more cable but not a big deal imo.

 

[rhansen5_99]

Using optical from the computer to the receiver would be a good solution, but I do not have an optical or coaxial out on the motherboard. I am running a shuttle sn68g2, so basically not much more room for a sound card maybe an Asus sonar or something like that not to mention with an ATI 4850 x2 4600 and 2 sata hdd's I am prob really close to the 250Watt power supply's limitations.

Is there a converter to pull the audio out of the hdmi to optical or spdif? Now that would be perfect.

And thanks for the link.

 

[gmkmay]

I don't know of any TV that will accept HDMI and output anything other than 2ch stereo out of its optical port, so that's most likely your issue. My first recommendation would be getting an HDMI audio capable receiver and if that isn't an option my second recommendation is a second audio card in the shuttle to output optical.

 

[rhansen5_99]

So just to be sure it is the HDMI handshake that determines what audio formats can be used? Thanks again guys

 

[bfellow]

FYI I am using Power DVD and the media is outputting 5.1 or greater just hitting the receiver as stereo

Thanks

PowerDVD does the downmixing since you're plugging it into the TV. It will turn it into stereo instead of 5.1 DTS