I am trying to do the least expensive way to play Netflix streaming movies from their website to my home theater system. I have purchased a Dynex 5.1 sound card that has an optical digital output. I hooked that up, but as far as I can tell so far it seems to only send a stereo signal. I read a bunch of similar questions today and I keep seeing that I need a card with Dolby Digital Live to have surround sound with games. But I don't really care about games. I want surround sound in videos and movies on the computer to play as true surround sound in my home theater. Any suggestions? Will my Dynex work for that?
I do not know about the card you have. I am using X-Fi that does NOT have Dolby Digital Live but still it can output 5.1 via digital connection - there is SPDIF pass thru option to do that. This works for any surround audio that has been encoded into AC3 stream, such as e.g. DVD movies. If Netflix movies come with surround sound in AC3 (do they?) then search for the SPDIF passthru, through or by-pass option and if it is not there, return Dynex and get a cheapest X-Fi Xtreme Audio card.
