I was pointed to a 5.1 version of the Halo 3 trailer, which is in -naturally- wmv format. Well, I have all the needed video and audio codecs so thats not a problem. But, the movie played back in stereo only. In every player I used, it was just stereo. BSplayer, Mediaplayer Classic, even WMP9 only plays back stereo. Media Player Classic at least acknowledged that the audio is in 6 channel (under the properties tab) but it did not play it back.
After a lot of tweaking and codec installations, I still can't figure out how to get this video to play in 5.1. The best I can get is to open the file in foobar2k 0.83 which will play back the 5.1 audio from it. Is there any way to get the playback right in video players without ripping the 5.1 audio, converting it to something else and mux it together with the video?

Here's the video I'm talking about:
http://assets.xbox.com/en-us/E32006/press/...lo3-trailer.zip

There are few requirements for playing multi-channel wma.

1. You need to have Windows XP.
2. You need to set your computer to have 5.1 speakers from controlpanel.

Something: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsme...roplayback.aspx

Check and Check. I have been running 5.1 stuff on this computer since years but wma 5.1 doesnt work with any video player. Only dropping the WMV video file in Foobar will allow me to play the 5.1 audio part.

Works fine here, in Winamp.

Winamp uses Directsound decoders - which only outputs stereo just like in every other player (it does recognize the 6 channel stream just like MPC did though). I guess I have a codec problem...

WMA & WMV are decoded using the Windows Media Format SDK, not DirectShow.

Whatever they are decoded with, it decodes them only in Stereo. Even Windows Media Player (9) itself only outputs stereo.

I just switched to Foobar 0.92 and it reports Stereo too. Foobar 0.83 reported 6 channels. I suppose this is because Foobar 0.9 uses the Windows WMA library, which also reports Stereo only...

Upgrading to Windows Media Player 10 did not fix the problem.

Is it possible that my soundcard is not accepted as a proper 5.1 card? It's an old SB Live card, running the latest KX project drivers.

edit: The newest (beta) version of Winamp can play back the movie with 5.1 audio too... All the players that could get the audio playing used a driver different from the built-in Windows one.

Oh dear. It seems the fault was indeed in my soundcard: the 5.1 stream I was trying to play back is 5.1chn 48khz 24bit. My card only supports 16 bit playback. Thus, the WMA decoder downsamples it to 48khz stereo.
Winamp played back because I was using a out_ds_ssrc for output, with resampling set to 48khz 16bit. Without resampling, it won't play back the 5.1 audio either.

Guess I can't do much about this other then buying a new soundcard.