[Petronic]

So I reinstalled iOS 4.2.1 and loaded the stable XBMC. I think you mentioned that you can throw in my actual rips and the DVD player on XBMC cam play em? Have never tried that if it's true. Always though rip and high quality encode to m4v with meta tags was the way.

I think you're confusing my talk of the passthrough option in handbrake as being a "direct rip" of the AC3 bitstream with the idea that you'd actually be ripping the DVD image. That's not the case. In the current stable release of xbmc the playback of dvd images isn't working, in fact.

The passthrough option is simply ripping just the audio stream in it's original 2-channel container (holding the digital 5.1 bitstream) and placing it in the encoded file in it's original state, while the video is processed by handbrake.

[6corewhore]

Gotcha. I saw a DVD Player option at one point and didn't know what it was. Thought it may have been an app to play DVD rips directly without HB encoding.

I ripped a few SD DVD's last night using AAC Stereo then AC3 (5.1) Passthru. I compared them to my older m4v's with AC3 (5.1) 6-Channel Discrete at 640 kbps and noticed a difference, and so did my friends. Placebo effect maybe? Also noticed AC3 Passthru lists 2 Channels (as you mentioned) as my Pioneer VSX-33 handling the 5.1, but my older m4v's with AC3 (5.1) 6-Channel lists 6 channels.

Side note, I altered my guisettings.xml (I know it's not necessary as you can configure it through XBMC's GUI but some reported the settings didn't take and ssh'ed for direct configuration). Noticed my audio output wasn't set for AC3 and DTS Passthrough after I set it and rebooted on the unit. Reading the threads I altered these settings (/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/guisettings.xml):

<audiooutput>
<ac3passthrough>true</ac3passthrough>
<audiodevice>Default Output Device</audiodevice>
<channellayout>5.1</channellayout>
<dontnormalizelevels>true</dontnormalizelevels>
<dtspassthrough>true</dtspassthrough>
<mode>2</mode>
<passthroughaac>false</passthroughaac>
<passthroughmp1>false</passthroughmp1>
<passthroughmp2>false</passthroughmp2>
<passthroughmp3>false</passthroughmp3>
</audiooutput>

Some reason channellayout was set to 8., and I know mode=2 is HDMI. Haven't tried it with these settings yet.