cwy

Those who have Creative X-Fi sound card should know that the digital out jack is doubled as the line-in jack (Creative is getting cheap-o). I have the X-Fi and I'm using the digital out jack as line in. I don't need digital output as I use the X-Fi analog outputs, which are connected to my analog speakers (Creative P7800 7.1). So when I watch DVDs, I need to have X-Fi use its built-in Dolby Digital or DTS decoding.

But now I need to watch HD DVDs, and they have Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) audio, which the X-FI cannot decode. But my PowerDVD Ultra player software can. So now I need X-Fi to pass the DD+ bitstream to PowerDVD instead. But since my digital out jack is used as line-in, there seems to be no way to do that.

Thinking "what've I got to lose", I go into to X-Fi mixer software and set it to use external dolby digital decoder, making the digital out jack send out DD+ bitstream. But with it being used as line in, I'm thinking it won't work...

But the funny thing is I DO get sound in PowerDVD. And it does like surround sound that is properly decoded. And I do notice a better sound quality that DD+ is supposed to offer, but that may be a subjective feeling.

So does anyone know WHAT exactly is the X-Fi sending to PowerDVD? It sure isn't the DD+ bitstream, because the digital out is not being used. Is the X-Fi able to decode DD+, but how can it be?