DVD Audio Playback Issue

Simply put, I cannot get the DVD-ROM to play the sound from a DVD movie in 5.1 channel audio. It is always in 2-channel (left/right) audio no matter what I try ! I have done enough testing with 5.1 channel audio on my computer to feel the problem must be either that the DVD-ROM is incapable of 5.1 channel audio or that Win98SE is incapable of utilizing "digital" audio from the DVD-ROM. Hopefully someone will know more about this than I do because I am lost.
My system is equipped with AC97 on-board 5.1 channel audio outputs on the ABIT AS8-V motherboard. I get the proper 5.1 channel audio output playing games, .wav files from the hard drive, an audio CD in the CD-ROM, and even extracting a DVD movie to the hard drive and playing it back from the hard drive. However if I try to play the same DVD movie from the DVD-ROM there is always only 2-channel audio output. What really makes no sense is this .... On the secondary IDE controller are the DVD-ROM (master) and the CD-ROM (slave). With the CD-ROM, I can go into the Windows -Control Panel - Multimedia, check the box under CD-ROM labelled "digital audio extraction" and the audio outputs in 5.1 channel audio. The audio is delivered across the IDE cable to the computer and no 4-wire CD audio cable is necessary. It would seem to me that the 5.1 channel audio of the DVD movie should also be delivered in the same manner across the IDE cable to the computer, but it doesn't. An important detail is that using the same software DVD player (Matrox DVD Player with the AC3 codec) for DVD playback on the computer, I can put a DVD movie known to have 5.1 channel audio into the DVD-ROM, set it up to play 5.1 channel audio through the DVD menu, but ALWAYS get 2-channel audio when the movie plays. However, if I extract the same movie from the DVD-ROM to the hard drive, the software DVD player (Matrox DVD player) will play the movie from the hard drive with the proper 5.1 channel audio.

Could it be that this combination DVD player/writer (Mat****a DVD-RAM SW-9531) can only playback in 2-channel audio ? That seems stupid considering a DVD is the one source most capable of delivering 5.1 channel audio. Could it be that Win98SE has no way to get the 5.1 channel audio from the DVD-ROM because it is not equipped to deal with a DVD-ROM ? It is most notable that there are no settings anywhere in Windows multimedia to deal with a DVD-ROM. No section labelled DVD-ROM with a checkbox to enable "digital audio extraction", like the CD-ROM has. Nor are there any slider controls in the "volume control mixer" for DVD, only a volume control labelled "CD" which controls any CD Audio delivered across the IDE cable.

Any advice would be helpful as I would like to not only watch a DVD from my computer but hear it in its true fidelity. Thanks !

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..An important detail is that using the same software DVD player (Matrox DVD Player with the AC3 codec) for DVD playback on the computer, I can put a DVD movie known to have 5.1 channel audio into the DVD-ROM, set it up to play 5.1 channel audio through the DVD menu, but ALWAYS get 2-channel audio when the movie plays. However, if I extract the same movie from the DVD-ROM to the hard drive, the software DVD player (Matrox DVD player) will play the movie from the hard drive with the proper 5.1 channel audio. ..

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Hi md welcome to windrivers forums.

So I think first thing to try is some different player software & or additional /different codecs (COmpressor/DECompressor which is a bit of hardware or software capable of turning one data stream into another) & see if we can either repeat this or hopefully get a different result .. perhaps try the klite 'mega' pack , which has a couple of s/w players & almost all the codecs you'd need for dvd playback.

All I can think of at the minute by way of explanation is that, playing from hard-drive, results in your player using different codecs, than those it might use for playing direct from dvd, because you've 'done 1/2 its job' by converting from the format used on DVD, to that used by your operating system already .. (your s/w player should attempt to find a suitable codec that won't degrade playback, if it thinks it might have to work 'too hard' its maybe using a stereo codec to lessen its workload ?) ..