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User profile for user: jtp84
jtp84 Author
User level: Level 1
10 points

iTunes rented movie not outputting Dolby Digital 5.1 audio

The problem with the downloaded movie (Real Steel HD) is

that the Dolby Digital 5.1 (English) audio is not being putput. The movie is only playing back in

"stereo" mode. When playing back on iTunes there are four audio tracks

to choose from:


1. English 1 (This plays stereo)

2. English 2 (NO SOUND) - I believe this should be the Dolby Digital track

3. French (This plays stereo)

4. Spanish (This plays stereo)


Neither of the two English tracks is outputting Dolby Digital 5.1 audio.


I have confirmed that my PC is capable of up to 7.1 surround sound and

my A/V receiver is capable of even more. I have updated both the ATI

Radeon 4500 driver and the Realtek drivers. I have tested and

confirmed that my PC is capable of outputting sound to all 5 of my

speakers and my subwoofer, HOWEVER when playing back the rented movie

in iTunes the maximum audio is stereo. I have the latest version of

iTunes installed, so that shouldn't be the problem.


I have also purchased another movie advertised as Dolby Digital 5.1

audio (The Bourne Supremecy HD) but I am afraid to begin my 24-hour

viewing period because of these audio problems being unresolved.


My question is: Are there known issues of movies purchased on iTunes

and played back on a Windows 7 PC not playing the Dolby Digital

tracks? If so, is there a fix for this via an iTunes settings change

or a Windows update patch?


From the four audio tracks that I listed above, I believe track 2 is

the Dolby Digital track, yet there is NO SOUND when that track is

selected.


Please help, as this is pretty frustrating when your movie night is ruined for the family especially after you've paid for and waited for the movie to download.

Posted on Mar 13, 2012 7:00 AM

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20 replies
User profile for user: Doug_MH
Doug_MH
User level: Level 1
10 points

Sep 24, 2013 9:56 AM in response to Doug_MH

It's been almost 9 months since I last spent time on this problem so last weekend I thought that I'd do some testing to see if matters have improved as of iTunes 11.1.


I started by hauling my desktop PC over to the TV and hooking it up to my A/V receiver. This particular machine uses the onboard graphics of an AMD 890GX chipset. I saw no change in behaviour when using the Realtek Driver for ATI HDMI audio (you can select the surround soundtrack but the picture locks up as soon as you do), but when I swapped this out for the AMD driver included in the 13.1 Catalyst package, lo-and-behold I was finally able to get Dolby Digital output over HDMI.


Encouraged by this, I opened up my HTPC and swapped out the NVidia GT610 card that I purchased last December to solve this problem and popped in my original Radeon HD 5450 card. After installing the latest 13.9 Catalyst suite with the included HDMI audio driver, i was dismayed to find that iTunes *still* didn't recognize it. Downgrading to the driver in the 13.1 legacy package that worked on my desktop didn't help.


It's really a shame that Apple provides so little technical information of how iTunes is integrating with DirectSound. I could understand this if the product mostly worked, but since it doesn't the lack of documentation makes it very difficult to troubleshoot.

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iTunes rented movie not outputting Dolby Digital 5.1 audio

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