5.1 surround and laptop help?

Question

i have my laptop connected up to my samsung 50" hd tv, and also phillips HTS3357 5.1 surround sound, when i play a movie(on the laptop) ,(but through the tv) only the 2 rear speakers and the center speakers produce sound, is there a way to get my sub and the 2 front speakers to output full surround, thanx in advance(laptop is connected to tv using monitor cable and a 3.5mm audio cable

Answer 1

The its because of your audio cable. 3.5mm cables are only good for 2.1 because they only transfer sound for 2 channels. What you need to do is get new hardware.

First of all you need a 5.1 Sound card plug in to your computer. It and be external or internal (PCMCIA). I would recommend to buy a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Xtreme Audio for Notebook. Also get the Digital I/O Module and an optical cable so you can plug it in to your reciever.

This will work for 5.1 surround sound. Although if you playback moves from your computer, unless they are DVDs or BRs you are not going to get 5.1 Beacuse downloaded movies don´t have that audio channel integrated. Unless they are very good quality, which you had to check in your player.