No center channel in LiveTV or Recorded TV

[tredderx]

Howdy All,

I just reinstalled Windows 7 and I 'believe' that my center channel audio worked before the reinstall.

My setup:

HTPC w/ Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
Video:ATI 5570
Tuner: Hauppauge 2250 dual tuner
Codec Pack: Sharky007(32 and 64 bit packages
HDMI to AVR

Issue:
I don't get center channel audio from Live TV or Recorded TV that carries Dolby Digital. My AVR will display 'Dolby Digital', but I don't have any sound from the center channel speaker.
Movies with DD or DTS work just fine. AVR displays the audio format and center channel has audio.
It appears that it is only in LiveTV and RecordedTV.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Tredder

[newfiend]

Things to check..
In Windows Make sure your Audio is set to 5.1/7.1 for Windows. Control Panel> Sounds
In Media Center Make sure you ran thru the Speaker Setup and set your speakers to 5.1/7.1 depending on your setup.
Are you using the latest Video Card Drivers? Have you installed SP1? There are some HDMI fixes in SP1.
Check the TV and make sure the sound is actually coming from the AVR/Speakers not the TV.. This has happened to me before and the sound was coming from the TV speakers and not my Polks.. Sounded funny as you can imagine..
Check the AVR.. Sometimes the settings on mine get messed up by the kids and I have to reset it back to where it's supposed to be for proper 5.1 surround.
I had this issue awhile back when things wern't set quite right and my TV program recorded but it had no center channel either. Once I figured out what was wrong it all works correctly now. Mine was a missing Video Driver that didn't install correctly when I updated driver packages.
HTH,
newfiend

[richard1980]

Dolby Digital and 5.1 channels are not synonymous. Dolby Digital simply means the audio is digitally encoded with the Dolby codec. Your source might be DD, but that doesn't mean it has all 6 channels of audio information. So the first thing to do is verify the source actually contains 6 channels of audio. I don't have the first clue how to do that, but I can tell you I have the same problem with CBS. They like to broadcast a lot of "fake" DD 5.1 I guess. Right now I'm watching CBS and WMC says there are 6 channels, and my receiver is reporting 6 channels, there is no audio in the center channel. It's just empty. And I have absolutely no 3rd party codecs installed....just WMC defaults. I remember having this issue when I had my cable box hooked up, so I can only assume there are not 6 channels of actual audio in the signal.

Assuming you actually have 6 channels of audio in the signal, my next suggestion would be to investigate the codec pack. You may have something set up wrong. Your best bet would be to restore WMC to the default settings and see if that fixes the problem. If it does, further investigation into the Shark007 codecs would be required.

[tredderx]

Thanks for the replies.

Newfiend, I did most of what you suggested previous to posting, sorry, I should've mentioned that.
I then proceeded to install SP1, which doesn't seem to have done much that I can tell.

Richard, I think you nailed it.
It seems my issue is with the TV broadcast.

Fox has a center channel, but CBS and ABC don't. I only have the few OTA channels, so I guess I can live with it.

Thanks for your help!

[STC]

Does 4-1-1 info give you the audio info data? Not at home to check...

[richard1980]

Yes, it's in the Debug: Presentation screen. When I did the test, it was reporting 6 channels of audio. I guess the center channel was just empty data.

[TheOsburnFamil]

Be careful with this recommendation; BUT, if it were me.. I'd install AC3Filter and the Win7PreferredCodecs utility to remove the MS Audio Decorder and allow AC3Filter to be the MPEG Audio Decoder... Make sure it's set to SPDIF Passthrough & the MPEG Audio is checked.

This should allow you to open the file with something link graphedit and see all the channel data.

[etcarroll]

OP - do you live in Philly?

I get my OTA HDTV feed from Philly and I just realized I'm missing center channel on CBS late night talk shows, but it's there for other channels, and dvd with 5.1 mix.