[bobpensik]

Well i will be purchasing a new !2 inch PB soon and i have a 5.1 Sound System, and i was wondering if anyone could tell me if it is compatiable with the PB???? if not, are there any options that i have at my disposal??

[Spheric Harlot]

http://forums.macnn.com/69/mac-notebooks/170559/sonica-theather/ is one option.

[bobpensik]

thanks, but i think that is just a bit too costly for my budget

[jsnyder]

Originally posted by bobpensik:
thanks, but i think that is just a bit too costly for my budget

I basically came to the same conclusion, especially since Apple's DVD player still doesn't really support more than 2 channels from what I've heard. These products come with VLC which needs more CPU time to decode DVDs than Apple's player. (Correct me if I'm wrong, but last time I checked up on these that was the case).

It doesn't give me real surround sound in any sense of the word but I just use a splitter. Better than those extra channels going to waste. Works fine with my set of ProMedia 4.1s.

[RayX]

Originally posted by bobpensik:
Well i will be purchasing a new !2 inch PB soon and i have a 5.1 Sound System, and i was wondering if anyone could tell me if it is compatiable with the PB???? if not, are there any options that i have at my disposal??

M-Audio Sonica USB (playback only)
http://www.m-audio.com/products/cons...nica_page1.php

M-Audio Transit (playback and recording)
http://www.m-audio.com/products/m-audio/transit/

I personally would recommend the Sonica USB. Just waiting on DVD Player 4.0 in Panther to natively support S/DIF hardware. VLC barely works with these devices, I wouldn't rely on that. It is also still quite buggy when playing back DVDs (menus not working etc).

Works great for iTunes as well. Any other audio sources will just be passed to your receiver in stereo. But it sounds MUCH cleaner than using the analog headphone jack.

All you will need to buy extra is a fiber optic (TOSLINK-TOSLINK) cable. If your 5.1 receiver does not support TOSLINK, you will need to look at another device such as the Sonica Theater which supports COAX.

It's about time Apple's DVD player supported digital out hardware, Windows based DVD players (WinDVD, PowerDVD) have been doing this fro years and they work great. Lets just hope that DVD Player 4.0 isn't locked down to only work with the G5s optical out, or only pass out Dolby Digital, when it should pass out the raw audio, regardless of what it is.