2012-04-20, 17:15
I was hoping someone could lend a little recommendation or help on this one. My home setup is pretty straight forward, my video card carries HDMI to my Onkyo receiver, which can decode the audio from XBMC while sending video to my LCD.
At mi madre's, well it's a whole other fiasco. Her plasma is wall mounted over a staircase with HDMI drops running back to another cabinet. Her surround sound is a legacy Pioneer 5.1 DVD system that has a single Coxial in, 2 L/R RCA ins, and no video processing. As of now, I've got her HD DVR running HDMI to the TV and Coaxial out to the receiver. I have an optical cable running from the TV to an Optical > Coaxial converter. Both of those I have a on a simple RCA Switcher mounted to the front of her stand, so you can switch between the two with the push of a button.
We have three laptops in her house that can and will run XBMC, all have HDMI out, non have SPDIF out. I can piggyback the audio from the HDMI in to the TV and back out through the Optical, but it only sends back 2.1, and the vast majority of my files have surround soundtracks on them. Is there a decent, inexpensive external sound card with SPDIF out that will support multichannel soundtracks or am I best just to suck it up and deal with Pro Logic audio?
At mi madre's, well it's a whole other fiasco. Her plasma is wall mounted over a staircase with HDMI drops running back to another cabinet. Her surround sound is a legacy Pioneer 5.1 DVD system that has a single Coxial in, 2 L/R RCA ins, and no video processing. As of now, I've got her HD DVR running HDMI to the TV and Coaxial out to the receiver. I have an optical cable running from the TV to an Optical > Coaxial converter. Both of those I have a on a simple RCA Switcher mounted to the front of her stand, so you can switch between the two with the push of a button.
We have three laptops in her house that can and will run XBMC, all have HDMI out, non have SPDIF out. I can piggyback the audio from the HDMI in to the TV and back out through the Optical, but it only sends back 2.1, and the vast majority of my files have surround soundtracks on them. Is there a decent, inexpensive external sound card with SPDIF out that will support multichannel soundtracks or am I best just to suck it up and deal with Pro Logic audio?
