[MPlayer-users] SBlive, ac3 passthrough, OSS and/or ALSA

[Ketil Z. Malde]

Hi,

I recently installed MPlayer on my Debian system (thinking of
replacing Xine as DVD playing software), and I must say it works
fairly well.  (In particular, I like the -dvd 1 option to just "get on
with it" and play the movie.  Any tricks to get KDM or similar to do
it automatically when a DVD is inserted and nobody is logged on?
Ditto for audio CDs etc?)

However, I seem to be unable to get ac3 passthrough to work
correctly. 

With the default (linux 2.4.19) OSS emu10k1 driver, the default sound
works okay, but -ac hwac3 simply produced digital noise.

I downloaded the latest emu10k1 tarballs from SourceForge, and
installed them.  Now the -ac hwac3 options worked, and I got 5.1
channel from the SPDIF -- but video was very slow, lagging miles
behind the sound.  Until it seems MPlayer just quit, and turned off
sound entirely.

So the questions:

Does anybody have SB Live with ac3 passthrough through the SPDIF
working properly?  Any hints?

I thought about using ALSA, but when I browse this list's archives, I
see warnings against it.

Why would a broken sound driver slow down video?  Okay, MPlayer is
helpful enough to suggest it as reason #1, and my technical expertise
in these matters is probably lacking, but isn't it a SMOP to push the
raw data stream in the right direction?

Finally, is there anything else I can do to diagnose the problem, or
otherwise be of help?

-kzm
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants