Surround sound modes grayed out

dadj - Welcome to the discussions!

What application is sending the sound out? Are you sure you are sending 5.1 out?

My receiver will only show surround when a something more than stereo is being played. Perhaps nothing is wrong.

The only other application capable of playing a DVD movie, that I've heard of, is the VLC Media Player. Although, it's still in beta and has been being developed for quite some time. It can often play AVI or other types of videos that neither the QuickTime Player nor the DVD Player can play.

-Doug

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030825045710515 and http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/ should help with options for adding codecs to play DIVX within QuickTime Player

p.s. best to start a new thread in the proper place - this really has nothing to do with the mini and you will get better experts in the video / software area for this question.

Amazing as it seems Apples DVD player will NOT output to 5.1 surround sound. The teki help I got on the phone seemed to imply that I was some kind of freak for even wanting to hear surround sound on my computer... So we are using the VLC dvd player which works just fine.

I'm just posting this to help save anyone else the trouble of trying to hear 5.1 while using the Apple DVD player...

Gordon.
http://www.triggermusic.com

Apple's DVD Player.app will play Dolby Digital (AC3) or DTS surround sound. However, to turn on that option you must first have a digital connection and then open the DVD Player and go to the "Disc Setup" tab and select the digital audio option from the "Audio output" pop-up menu. It works for me!

-Doug

P.S. It's against the Terms of Use of the Apple Discussions to post a link or URL unless it specifically answers someone's question. It's not appropriate to use one in your signature as you've done.

I'm pretty much having the same problems. I have the optical jack plugged into my home theater receiver. When I play DVD's encoded in 5.1, I am still getting a PCM signal (2 channel). I go to Disc Setup but the audio options are greyed out. I don't get it. I thought the mini would send out the raw signal and then my receiver would decode what it gets.

I don't really want to use a third party app just to get 5.1 from DVDs. This is a major reason I even bought a mini... 😟

okay, I figured it out. When in the DVD player, you have to have the disc STOPPED. Then you can change the audio output. I did this, then it worked. 5.1 baby! I'm a doof sometimes 🙂

Welcome to the Apple Discussions! Glad you got it figured out. 🙂

-Doug