VLC output via HDMI and SPDIF

Hi all,
My acer has HDMI and SPdif.I am currently watching movies in my bed room in my Pana LCD connected via HDMI from my Acer laptop.

Now, my question is, can I do a setting in VLC so that it sends Video only via HDMI to LCD and Audio it sends via SPDIF so I can connect my SPDIF of lappy to my DacMagic hear through my speaker instead of the crapy Pana speaker?

I googl;ed and tried few settings but with no luck.

Typically the LCD/LED/Plasma TVs have an optical out. I have personally seen it on a few of the LG TVs. So may be you can connect the TV out to the DAC in.

This should definitely work, Ram.

If you go to the Audio output settings and set it to digital output, does it not work? Just to double check if it is a VLC problem or a general audio settings problem you could try and play a song from Foobar or any other player to see where audio is routed.

I do it day in day out with VLC on standard settings. My HTPC is connected to the Panasonic C10 via HDMI. Only video goes through that. All audio goes via SPDIF (now).

NOTE - I have never had to change settings with any video player till date.

@Bansal: Those are available only in latest LCDs .

@Vortex: I know i tried it. Foobar, Media Monkey all play very well only VLC has the problem, though I have set to optical out

Hey Ram for this you have to change settings in your sound card software / driver etc. For example, Realtek Audio Manager. Or even in Windows itself, you can choose whether you want sound through HDMI. Maybe next time we meet I can check this out and do it. My HP Pavilion has only HDMI out so I did not have this problem. However I did configure my colleague's brand new desktop PC to give out sound through the optical out port and video through HDMI. After doing this, I could use this desktop PC in the hall, connect it to the plasma using HDMI and get 5.1 sound through the optical out port connected to my Sony receiver. I personally tested out Need for Speed Carbon, Pro Street, UnderCover etc. It was great.

So check out the sound settings using your sound driver software or the Sound section in Windows. You can access this by right clicking on the sound / speaker icon at the bottom right near the clock.

Hope that helps.

---Venkat

Did that. I changed to SPDIF in audio manager of Win 7. But I get only humming noise and audio is still heard in LCD

So if you play test tone (as in you bump or lower the volume on Windows) your sound goes out through the optical out?

Do one thing. Download TheKMPlayer and use it without any change in settings. It should by default spew out audio to the digital out. If not, then we can mess with the settings.

Sometimes, with these things, you can even uninstall VLC (just in case there are changes done to the settings that you cannot get back right) and reinstall it. But before doing it, lets experiment with one other player.

Will do that today at home and post the feedback :0

i am using a similar setup for a while. I use DVI-D (with a DVI-D converter to HDMI) using hdmi cable and coaxial cable for audio. The hdmi goes straight to tv and coax goes to the amp.

try media player classic also, if you have issues with vlc, try everything else possible. I remember struggling a lot with vlc for this. once u get it to work with mpc, then try vlc.

The simplest way is to select the SPDIF device as the default sound device in sound properties(For eg I have selected Juli Ch34 for my SC, which represents the optical/coaxial output), and install AC3Filter..it takes care of both 2 channel and multichannel sound.
But AC3Filter cannot be used with VLC..
If you have the necessary video codecs installs on ur machine then even Windows Media Player would do the job.