Codecs and Players

[Killa-Eyez]

Hiya. Been a while (again) so here's my post;

I've got a laptop and a PC connected to my Sony STR-DA50ES reciever over S/PDIF. The laptop has a Realtek HDA integrated soundchip (ALC888S) and has a Home Theater feature which, if selected, sends out a Dolby Digital Live! signal over the TOSLink connection (3.5mm jack) decoding everything to 5.1 surround sound. A very neat and easy-to-use feature, ideal for playing music on all my Jamo speakers.

Now my PC also has a Realtek HDA integrated soundchip (ALC1200) which, unfortunately, doesn't support this feature. It's connected with a coaxial S/PDIF RCA cable and the only output it has is PCM 2 channel for everything without a DD or DTS track. Now it seems that it's not the hardware that doesn't support it as the soundchips all seem the same and are all capable of sending DD or DTS signals. It's rather dependent on it's hardware ID defined in the bios settings, allowing or blocking certain features like DDL! or DTS-Connect during it's driver installation. It all comes down to licensing. Scoping the web for possible solutions to use this same feature on the PC, I came across a couple of possibilties. One was the use of modified Realtek drivers in conjunction with X-Fi drivers and utilities with DDL! and DTS-C installed seperately. This I could not get to work after one try and frankly became too much of a hassle to set up. Another theory was hacking the hardware ID, tricking the driver installer into enabling such features. The latter seems the most proficient solution to my problem but a way has yet to be discovered.

So after several hours of searching I settled with this forum post. I decided I didn't need to hear everything in 5.1 surround, just my music. I'd use my laptop to watch movies anyway. I use CodecGuide's K-Lite Mega Codec Pack along with it's x64 variant, installing and setting up everything to be played with WMP12 as I'm not too big on having different players installed. I followed the instructions in the post except for enabling the LFE Crossover and I now play all my music in 5.1 surround.

I thought I'd just post this for anyone experiencing the same issue as I did. Hope it helps.

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Another problem though... I'm not sure if it's dependent on the codec installed, the VGA card, the DVI cable/connection or my SyncMaster it's hooked on but almost every file starts of playing in a bright red color. The picture is viewable except it looks all pink and gay-ish:

Wrong Color.jpg

I've used CodecGuide's FAQ to determine the problem but to no avail. Funny thing is though, after clicking on any different file like .avi or .mp4 (which play ok) and clicking the same .mkv file again makes it go away. Guess I'll have some troubleshooting to do. If anyone knows a little more, your help would be appreciated.