I'm confused about SPDIF, SageTV, and nVIDIA PureVideo

[jbarr]

Typically, when we watch TV, we listen to the sound through the TV's speakers (simple stereo.) But occasionally, we like to turn on our receiver to pipe the audio through "real" speakers. This is especially nice when viewing DVD's that are encoded with either Dolby Digital DTS. My DVD player will handle this, but I'm trying to consolidate everything through SageTV.

We have a Sony DVD player/receiver that has a SPDIF (TosLink) connection on the back, and our current MOXI DVR has a both TosLink and standard RCA left & right connectors. I hook the RCA cables to the TV, and the TosLink connector to our receiver, and MOXI pipes audio through both simultaneously. Our scenario works perfectly.

Enter SageTV.

My HTPC came with a SPDIF (Coax) connector, but to get it to connect to the receiver, I really need to purcahse an optional TosLink port (very cheap and very doable.) I currently have the SageTV HTPC connected to the TV via RCA cables, but I would like to also connect it to the receiver using the optional TosLink connection.

OK, so after reading the manuals and poking around this site, my understanding now is that configuration is an "either-or" situation where you can configure either SPDIF or PC speaker output, but not both. Is this correct?

Is there any way for me to connect the HTPC to the receiver via TosLink and simulteneously connect the analog feed to my PC? (using stereo PC to RCA using a standard "Y" connector)

An alternative is to just split the analog signal and send it to both the TV and the receiver, and though this would significantly improve the sound, I unfortunatly lose the capability to play DTS and Dolby 5.1 DVD's through SageTV. I can always fall back on the Sony DVD player to play the DVD's, but but my goal is to consolidate everything through SageTV.

Suggestions?

[MeInMaui]

Sending audio output via SPDIF or analog is usually an either/or situation. At one point I had set up Girder to switch between analog and digital output and mapped the function to a remote button. This worked pretty well. I have had another system that used dolby digital live (nvidia soundstorm) to encode all output in dolby5.1. With this system, both digital and analog outputs were simultaneously enabled. Unfortunately there was a small but noticeable phase delay between the two outputs that gave a slight echo effect. I wasn't happy with that so I still ended up using one or the other. Hope this helps.

Aloha,
Mike

[Lucas]

A while back I was running both SPDIF and analog 2channel out concurrently from the Mobo without any problems.

It could be related to audio driver specifics so it is not an absolute no-no.

[autoboy]

I had both analog as well as toslink as well. I never had to set anything special up. The hardest part was getting AC3 audio over toslink instead of stereo. Once I had that set up both analog stereo and toslink worked just fine.

[Sagebrush]

Originally Posted by autoboy

I had both analog as well as toslink as well. I never had to set anything special up. The hardest part was getting AC3 audio over toslink instead of stereo. Once I had that set up both analog stereo and toslink worked just fine.

Autoboy, I've struggled with the same problem as jbarr. I can get Dolby II out the toslink concurrent with analog out the PC, but once I set the toslink to Dolby Digital 5.1, the analog output from the PC goes off. I'm using AC3 Filter.

Are you getting Dolby Digital 5.1 out your PC's toslink and, if so, do you recall your settings?