Center channel played through TV speakers, removing the need for a center speaker
#1
5.1 and higher speaker setups are the norm these days. But most of us also want to limit the clutter that all these speakers bring. Especially important to get for spousal acceptance for our media setup. What if we would need one speaker less, namely the centre speaker. It would work like this;

Bit stream (for example DTS or DD) is decoded by XBMC. The centre channel is sent to the TV through the HDMI cable to both left and right speakers. The other channels are sent to the receiver through optical out in PCM format.

This would probably result in a pretty nice sound as the TV's speakers are well able to play the midrange audio frequencies that are needed for voice.

This wouldn't work however when you are using HDMI to connect to your receiver. That might not be a big problem as in such cases one would have a fairly modern receiver that might have the option to do the same thing? If not there might be other ways to achieve the same result.

To cater for different setup scenario's this would require some flexibility in XBMC to configure which channel should be sent where. Also it would require XBMC to decode the bitstream to make it possible to manipulate the separate channels.
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#2
atbrandt Wrote:5.1 and higher speaker setups are the norm these days. But most of us also want to limit the clutter that all these speakers bring. Especially important to get for spousal acceptance for our media setup. What if we would need one speaker less, namely the centre speaker. It would work like this;

Bit stream (for example DTS or DD) is decoded by XBMC. The centre channel is sent to the TV through the HDMI cable to both left and right speakers. The other channels are sent to the receiver through optical out in PCM format.

This would probably result in a pretty nice sound as the TV's speakers are well able to play the midrange audio frequencies that are needed for voice.

This wouldn't work however when you are using HDMI to connect to your receiver. That might not be a big problem as in such cases one would have a fairly modern receiver that might have the option to do the same thing? If not there might be other ways to achieve the same result.

To cater for different setup scenario's this would require some flexibility in XBMC to configure which channel should be sent where. Also it would require XBMC to decode the bitstream to make it possible to manipulate the separate channels.

or you could just send the signal via HDMI to a receiver that can then delegate that the TV speakers are the center channel, thus reducing the workload, period...?
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#3
OniFactor Wrote:send the signal via HDMI to a receiver that can then delegate that the TV speakers are the center channel

Does anyone here have experience doing this? Any receivers known to have this capability?

I'd be interested to find out if there are positive or negative experiences with such a setup.
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Center channel played through TV speakers, removing the need for a center speaker0