[mythtv-users] SPDIF Hardware

[Henry Fleischmann]

Eric Hattemer wrote:

>I'm thoroughly confused about S/PDIF hardware.  I have an nforce3
>chipset (gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro).  I think it came with an SPDIF adapter
>for the motherboard, otherwise I stole that from an old MSI motherboard
>I had.  The nforce3 chipset doesn't have the soundstorm acceleration, so
>I'm in the market for a new sound card.  I want proper Dolby coding for
>DVDs and hardware openAL support for America's Army.  I don't want to
>pay a ton of money for the card.  I'm looking at the Audigy 2 ZS or
>Audigy 2 Value. I want good hardware decoding, and an spdif out.
>
>Both cards say that they have spdif, but I've been staring at the
>pictures trying to figure out how I can connect my big RCA digital coax
>wire to those tiny little ports.  Do those cards actually have digital
>coax on-card, or do you have to buy a special adapter for them?  I've
>read that they definitely don't have optical.  If I need an add-on card,
>will the one that came with my motherboard work?  Are all spdif out
>interfaces the same?  If so, why doesn't Creative include the spdif
>adapter in their box?  Or do they include it in the box, and just none
>of the retailers show it?  I'm so confused, and have been searching
>around and looking at pictures for hours.  I know plenty of people here
>have spdif solutions, and I'm wondering how you did it.
>
>-Eric Hattemer
>
>
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>
I just installed a Turtle Beach Riviera ($29.95) and the optical out seems
to work great with all my videos, recordings, and DVDs. I used the CMI8738
drivers in the kernel and set mythtv to ALSA:spdif. I use the standard
.asoundrc from the Alsa site. As far as I can tell, I'm getting full 5.1
surround. I use variations on the following line for the players:

mplayer -ao alsa1x:spdif -srate 48000 -fs -zoom -vo xv -aid 128