right, the above posts may have answered this for me already... which will put an end to it I guess

but let me see if I understood it correct.
I have a win7 64bit laptop with media center that connects to my 360 slim 250gb via the extender.
My xbox is connected to my Onkyo 607 via optical (toslink).
My Xbox plays games in full dolby digital 5.1
I have the Shark007 codec pack installed.
WMC extender plays MKVs, MP4s etc perfectly... apart from it only ever sees 2channel audio no matter what I do.
My laptop only has a standard 2 channel headphone jack, or an available HD audio driver from Nvidia if I connect it via HDMI (defeats the point of streaming!).
My questions:
1. Because my laptop only recognises 2channels (ctrl pnl > sound), then media center only allows me to configure 2 channels via the tasks > setup, there for the stream will always be 2 channels.
Is this the reason why the xbox only gets 2 channels? Are there anyways to change this?
or
2. is it because when you stream (even know the source file has a full 5.1 audio stream in it) WMC will only ever stream 2 channels. This would be very frustrating indeed!
Ideally I would like the streaming file to pass all of the sound info over the stream, then let the Extender/AV grab the most appropriate setup for it. Either that or actually allow a way to configure the extender sound seperately from the parent WMC on my laptop.
Am I wishing for to much here? It really is starting to drive me mad so anyone with some insight in the matter would save what ever hair I have left!
