[mythtv-users] Surround Sound

Derek Scollon mailing.lists at scotwebsolutions.com
Tue Jun 14 11:43:04 UTC 2005


> I’m most of the way through a FC3, PVR350 install and was wondering about surround sound.
  
>  
  
> My current HiFi rig has been delegating this task to the VCR
> which I plan to get rid of once MythTV is up and running. Is there
> such thing as an audio card which can handle Dolby decoding and give
> me line-outs for the surround speakers? If this is the case I’ll
> look into buying or building a small amp to handle the surround. The
> VCR was nice in that it had a small builtin amplifier for surround
> and a pro-logic decoder.
  
>  
  
> I guess worst case I could look into getting a standalone
> surround decoder and plug the output of the Myth box into it but if
> there is a solution in the form of a PC card which does this it
> might be nicer.
    
> Regards
  
> Marty
  
I'm using a very inexpensive C-Media CM8738 PCI card. This has speaker outputs for 5.1 speakers and also an S/PDIF passthrough. It's supported by alsa and although I don't have every bug ironed out (I'm fairly new to MythTV myself) it was easy to switch the surround sound on in xine to use the card's decoder.

Sounds like you want to use your own speakers. Shouldn't be hard apart from getting the right connections. I went for a set of 5.1 speakers by Altec Lansing. They plug straight into the card. A nice feature is that they are controlled by IR remote, so I've programmed my learning remote to control the volume by turning the speakers up and down rather than getting Myth to alter the volume.

-- 
Derek



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