Dolby Digital (AC3) How to?

[Homer_Simpson]

Hallo to everybody!

I'm posting this question here as FTA hardware section is not letting me to post.

My question is: Are regular FTA receivers (not HD class) able to provide standard 2 channel stereo or mono audio when audio is in AC3 Dolby Digital 5.1.

I have SV-4000 and PBS channels on AMC3 have no audio - Once again I'm not talking about getting full 6 channels out of my receiver using optical output and decoding it by home theater etc. Only regular stereo or mono from RCA output.

Or to put it other way. are regular FTA receivers able to internally decode AC3 and downmix it to regular 2 channel stereo so I can keep it hooked up directly to my TV or I have to go into extra expenses of buyng Dolby Digital class amplifier and many speakers etc?

Thank you in advance

Homer

 

[mastermesh]

I don't think most fta receivers do the mixing inside of them. I know my pansat 3500 s does not... I didn't go the expensive dolby digital route. I went the cheaper way... soundblaster extigy external soundcard. Do some searches for it in the forums and ebay. I ended up finding mine on ebay. They are hard to find sometimes, but are worth it... it's basically the cheapest way to get dolby digital from the fta receiver working... the card is an external soundcard that came out several years ago and it's one of the few cards on the market that does ac3 inside of it without need of computer... it's an amazing card. It's a real shame they stopped making them... I suspect the high demand for them and the really high cost of alternatives is why they stopped making them. Another nice thing about this card... it takes sound in from both the fta receiver and your computer's other internal sound card... In other words, if you wanted to, you could do like I do sometimes, and run a really long audio extension cord from your computer's sound card to the audigy and essentially use your computer as a radio to send internet radio channels to your home entertainment system in the living room.... of course you'll need to take out the line from the computer most of the time since otherwise you'll get both tv sound and computer sound coming in at the same time, but it's not hard to simply pull a plug and then plug it in when you need it... but just for fta, yes, you don't have to hook it up to the computer at all. It will take the ac3 from the fta receiver and convert it over so it can play on whatever speaker you hook up to the extigy. I have a couple of old boom box speakers and computer speaker on a y audio cord hooked up to it. Please note... when I say any speaker, I mean most newer speakers. I was given an ancient pair of Sony SS-U45 speakers about a year ago when my father in law moved out of state... Those are too freaking big to work with the extigy (it doesn't put out enough juice for those huge speakers but that's because they are ancient I think), but they make a nice replacement on the boom box that I took the speakers off of to hook up to the extigy.

 

[Mr Tony]

The HD boxes will output AC-3 through the RCA cables
the regualr boxes do not. You ned an external device...

a fair amount of us did the "sonic voom" setup...little box that outputs AC_+3 and converts it to something that can be used with RCA plugs