HD-PVR optical audio, dropping out?

[SageGk]

I have an E1 Hd-PVR with the latest drivers. I have it running fine with RCA (red and white) audio, however when I try to use an optical cable the audio drops out and liveTV stutters like crazy. Any solutions out there?

[jm9843]

Using optical 5.1 ac3 audio with the latest driver , and I have bad video corruption & freezing specifically with 480i content. Locking the stb in to 1080i on all content seems to help, but it still has its problems. Certain channels seem to be worse than others. Has anyone done a test to determine if this is a Sage playback issue, an HD PVR driver problem, or both. I seem to remember a comment from Sage that the HD PVR doesn't create perfectly "in-spec" h264 files.

HD content, ironically enough, seems to be working perfectly - both with live TV and scheduled recordings. I've heard that switching to stereo audio gets rid of the problems, but I'm loathe to do that when HD recording is working so well with 5.1.

I'm tempted to switch to Dish and one of their Turbo HD packages (cheaper, more HD, and the all-HD lineup could conceivably work better with the HD PVR), but then I'd be giving up the firewire channel changing of the Comcast moto box.

Sigh, why can't it just work?