Enabling 5.1 sound in MCE 2005

[vinomarky]

Hi all,

I have a spdif digital sound cable from the motherboard of my PC to my Philips Soundbar (5.1 speaker). When I play videos with PowerDVD, I get full 5.1 sound - DTS etc...

When I play with MCE, I get 2 speaker sound.

When I try going through the MCE sound setup, specifying digital coax and 5.1 speaker setup - it completes successfully, but the test sound only yields two 'dings', and subsequantly playing DVD's gives me just the background sound - with no dialog

Can anyone provide some ideas of what I can do to troubleshoot this?

Thanks

[vinomarky]

Just a followup to this;

I am using ffdshow, and went in and check the settings - It was set to 2-channel output. Thinking I had it sorted, I reset it to 5.1 channel output, restarted MCE and went through the speaker setup. This time, I got more than two chimes in the test (so excited I did not count them all) , but when I tried to play my DVD again I got the same behaviour.... only background noises, no dialog.

My next step will be to start a DVD playing, and opening the nVidia PureVideo control to see if there are any settings there I can tweak.... Any one else have some thoughts that may help?

Originally Posted by vinomarky

Hi all,

I have a spdif digital sound cable from the motherboard of my PC to my Philips Soundbar (5.1 speaker). When I play videos with PowerDVD, I get full 5.1 sound - DTS etc...

When I play with MCE, I get 2 speaker sound.

When I try going through the MCE sound setup, specifying digital coax and 5.1 speaker setup - it completes successfully, but the test sound only yields two 'dings', and subsequantly playing DVD's gives me just the background sound - with no dialog

Can anyone provide some ideas of what I can do to troubleshoot this?

Thanks

[wilone]

Hi Vinomarky,

Try using ac3filter this has always enabled me to pass spdif 5.1 sound through to my receiver when playing dvd and tv through MCE.

[vinomarky]

Thanks - I have tried ac3 filter, and specifying passthrough without luck.

What I HAVE found though is a strange behavior with PureVideo.

When I play my DVD's (and not getting full passthrough) in MCE 2005, I can window MCE and bring up the PureVideo menu. I then change the PureVideo audio settings to receiver & SPDIF passthough and immediately my receiver lights up telling me it is getting passthrough - Yaaay....

BUT, when I then maximize the MCE window again it immediately reverts the way it was - I cannot seem to force PureVideo to provide passthrough while in fullscreen mode.....

Anyone else with ideas?

[janger]

uninstall powerdvd
uninstall video card and all mpeg drivers
uninstall audio drivers
reboot
when you will be ask about new hardware don't install anthing
install sound drivers manually from original or the latest setup
install video drivers
install the latest powerdvd or... try to use WinDVD

this is a well-know problem of MCE with some confirguration
I had such problems a year ago. I couldn't set the auto to spdif output,
and the settings was not memorized when I start the new movie, each time it back to 2 stero only. strange. but real.
in some type of video and audio drivers collected, you cannot use powerdvd correctly.

I definitively swithed to windvd some time ago

also: download microsoft mce check driver utylity, run and look what mpeg driver do you use there, or change to another one

finally, all problems disappeared, after some next re-installation of a whole mce with the latest factory audio and video drivers re-build. and the latest windvd.

(btw: that's why we use hard discs ghost copy)