I'm posting this now because I have a Sabrent 6-Channel 5.1 3D Surround Sound PCI card in my KnoppMyth R5E50 box, and I would like to use it to output 5.1 surround sound.

The card is based on the CMI8738 chipset, and was recognized by Linux as a ForteMedia 801 card. It does not have an S/PDIF optical out. Using alsaconf to recognize and set it up was a breeze.

My speaker set-up is pretty simple. Each of the 3 outputs out of the sound card are connected to their corresponding inputs on a Logitech surround speaker system. Each of the speakers has been tested and they all work fine.
When I do a speaker test, a la:

It tests all 6 speakers with some pink noise; however, noise only comes out of the Left Front and Right Front, meaning signal is only coming out of the (green) Left/Right Front output jack.
All media players in MythTV such as MPlayer, Xine, and VLC, and when watching LiveTV, do the same thing - only output through those two speakers.

A post on here, namely:
http://mysettopbox.tv/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14025
says that you can download a patch which you need to apply and then recompile.

I downloaded the patch, found here:
http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/attachment/t ... 3.22.patch
but then what?

I'm pretty new to Linux, so my first attempt:

is pretty embarrassing. But it seems to do something - since the patch file I'm guessing is a type of code script, I assume that it is running something (the prompt does not reappear after I hit enter, and does not come back unless I hit Ctrl-C).
When I then open up another terminal while this patch is running, then "speaker-test," the noise still comes out of the front left and right speakers, but it comes when the speaker test is claiming it is testing the REAR left and right speakers. So I guess as I have it, this patch script is redirecting the rear left/right signal to my front left/right output jack on the sound card.

I'm not recompiling in any way, like the post says to do, so I'm sure I'm doing something wrong.

Anyone know what the poster meant when he says "apply the patches... and recompile"? Sorry, but I'm new and probably need a step-by-step.
I already have the linux-source-2.6.18-chw-13 downloaded.

Or, does anyone know another way to get 5.1 sound out of their 5.1 surround cards on MythTV? Thanks for reading and for your help.

Ok, so I've figured out that the poster was talking about recompiling MythTV, not the linux kernel. So I applied the patch by copying it to a directory where I untar-ed the MythTV 0.20 source files and typing this:

That seemed to patch it, though there were one or two 'hunks' that had errors.
Then I did make, and make install.
I did a sound-test which seemed to re-route my left front and right front to right front and right rear, respectively (90 deg clockwise).
If I run alsaconf I don't get this anymore, it just reverts back to front left/right again.

I just upgraded from r5c7 to r5e50 and my 5.1 surround sound died.
In r5c7 I just configured xine to see 5.1 speaker setup and it worked fine.

So have we gone backwards with r5e50 in surround sound support?
Not sure I'm into recompiling all of mythTV.

Thanks

See the upgrade hints thread for a pointer to the libxine fix...