Trying to get my 5850 to bistream -.-

OCdude · 17 Jul 2011 at 18:32

I've recently finished building my HTPC and I can't seem to get it to bitstream.

I'm using a 5850 card hooked up to my Onkyo NR906 recevier via HDMI. Sounds work fine, I just can't get it to bitstream anything (DTS/DD/DTSMA/TrueHD etc).

I've tried TotalMedia Theatre 5 and MPC-HC (with ffdshow configured... correctly... as far as I can see!) but neither are bitstreaming. The source material definitely has DTS:MA/TrueHD encoded, as both players show it on the information screen.

I've scoured the Catalyst control panel and can't see anything relating to sound and I've also checked the Windows settings (Windows 7 x64 btw) but again, can't see anything obviously wrong.

Hopefully I'm just missing something simple?!

Cheers in advance!

james.miller · 17 Jul 2011 at 18:51

if it's not bitstreaming then what is it doing instead when you play those hd audio tracks (i assume you have selected them when playing the films) ?

OCdude · 17 Jul 2011 at 19:13

Well I have it set to upmix analog stuff (or whatever Windows sounds come out as!) to a "THX: Games" preset (as it then makes use of my 7 speakers). But when I play a Bluray etc, it doesn't kick in and change it accordingly, or show up on the display, saying that it's receiving an xyz encoded stream.

james.miller · 17 Jul 2011 at 19:14

..so do you get sound coming out of the amp or not? what is the amp saying?

the spu on the 5850 to my knowledge isnt capable of decoding HD bitstreams, so if it isnt outputting them and yet you still get audio, that means the spu isnt receiving the hd bitstream in the first place, which points to there software being the problem.

OCdude · 18 Jul 2011 at 08:51

Like I said, sound works fine, I can hear Windows sounds, video etc. The amp doesn't receive any "bitstreamed" stream (for want of a better term!) it just stays on the existing mode (i.e. whatever upmixing mode I'm currently using).

Can't see any obvious options though :/

The only "bitstreaming" options i've come across, have been when configuring ffdshow, which is why i'm wondering if there's another tickbox i've missed in the Catalyst control panel or something :S

OCdude · 18 Jul 2011 at 12:31

Might have fixed the issue (in Media Player Classic, at least) as I think I hadn't forced it to use the external ffdshow codec (plus I was trying to use the 32bit version of ffdshow with the 64bit version of MPC-HC hah!)

Will report back later!

OCdude · 18 Jul 2011 at 14:00

I'd call that a resounding success!

Just need to see if I can get TotalMedia working now.

Hmm upon further investigation it looks like TotalMedia won't work (but has been fixed in the latest beta patch) hmm.

EDIT: Tried the latest beta patch - and it does indeed work. Although I think i'm gonna stick to MPC-HC anyways!

Job's a goodun'!