Surround Sound on Recorded Shows

[robertmcox]

I have observed that both the DCT-2244 cable box I had in Colorado Springs, CO (Adelphia) and the Pioneer Voyager 3000 I now have in Columbus, OH (Time Warner) have SPDIF output. I am interested in using this output to record (encode the surround sound) with Sage TV. I have poked around a bit and there are no general consumer video capture cards that have SPDIF-in and encode surround sound into MPEG-2.

Is anyone interested in getting together to gently nudge Hauppage to come out with say a PVR-256 or PVR-356 that has a SVIDEO/Composite and a Stereo/SPDIF input?

Someone in another post also mentioned that the PVR-250 encodes surround sound "if appropriate" -- does anyone have any comments on this?

We (my wife too!) love our SageTV and we cannot watch regular cable anymore, even though we have 10 channels of video-on-demand (kinda weak, btw, as the on-demand shows are truncated, not full commercial-free shows). I am concerned though that we are missing out on the sound!

I would like to be able to use the SPDIF output on the SBLive (or similar) sound card to an A/V receiver or use the "synthesized" surround from the SBLive's 4-channel output.