BBC iPlayer and Dolby Digital surround on PC to Av-Amp...?

[Gimpymoo]

So, the setup is as so..

PC> HDMI> AV-AMP> HDMI> TV

The PC is set to 5.1 speakers. All works BUT, BBC iPlayer.

When watching a film on iPlayer for example, for films which are Dolby Digital encoded, I only get stereo, even if surround decode is enabled on the av-amp.

However, if I set the PC to 2.0, the amp is then able to decode the stereo mix to surround.

Anyone know if possible to keep the PC has 5.1 and still play iPlayer with the Dolby Digital content without having to change speaker setup all the time.

Having windows in 5.1 does something funky as the amp is then unable to see the Dolby digital signal or is ignoring them but having Windows in 5.1 should not prevent anything being passed to the amp.

I hope that makes sense.

Thanks all.

 

[Gimpymoo]

The PC is set to 5.1 speakers. All works BUT, BBC iPlayer.

A small but potentially relevant point: Just because the signal is encoded as DD doesn't necessarily mean it's DD5.1

DD2.0 is equally valid. I think I might even have someone 40s and 50s B&W films that were transfered to DVD as DD1.0

Where your amp is decoding DD straight then it will play out the signal as it sees it. Some can add surround effects to a DD2.0 signal.

I understand that, but I am refering to content I know IS surround in the Dolby wrapper.

What I want to know is why relating to iPlayer, windows "blocking" the dolby signal to the amp when windows set to 5.1 which is inconvenient.

When Windows is 5.1, the amp is unable to offer pseudo 5.1 but surely the same audio signal is present?

 

[Gimpymoo]

Just tried on ITV hub and the same thing happens.

I guess is a Windows or browser thing?

 

[Gimpymoo]

I didn't realise any of the Iplayer material has 5.1 content, I have only ever seen 2.0 streams when I download (cmd line), on a windows PC;
I thought you had to have recorded the original frreview/sat stream to have that.

I am refering to live streams, no on-demand.

Will try on-demand, see what happens.

 

[Gimpymoo]

Same thing happens with on-demand.

I can select pseudo surround from the amp and it works as expected... ONLY if Windows is in 2.0 speaker mode.

If Windows is in 5.1, the amp just outputs stereo.

 

[Gimpymoo]

Thanks, but my question is why does Windows in 5.1 prevent the amp from giving pseudo 5.1?

For example, watching Frozen on iPlayer with Dolby surround on amp gives a flawless 5.1 playback, but only when Windows is in Stereo mode.