Help Xoom HDMI out - capable of sending Dolby Digital and or DTS?

[yakboy]

Hay all,

I've been looking at Motorola Xoom as a potential laptop replacement. I reckon it ticks nearly all boxes apart from working Vision files but I can cope with that.

What I was wondering and can't find anything concrete on is whether it is capable of outputting either Dolby Digital or DTS sound over the HDMI port for video playback, I'm interested in out of the box as well as on paper ability.

I'd basically like to play my HDTV rips in my HD TV. I can happily deal with 720p but I can't cope with my processor sitting there turning PCM stereo streams into pseudo surround when there is a glorious 5.1 track happily nested in the source material.

Does anyone know whether this is possible? are any current Xoom owners in a position to test this for me?

Thanks in advance people.

Tom

 

[marctronixx]

hdmi is digital. the xoom is just passing thru whatever its playing. so it should be able to.

also there are video conversion programs that will allow you to make a 1080p video file that the xoom can playback for output to a larger display.

 

[yakboy]

marctronixx - thanks for your reply. I was hoping the same as you but the whole audio over HDMI is very much dependent on the software and just because the port and board are capable it's far from a definite that it actually does.

Has not one of you lucky Xoom owners tried HDMI into their home receiver? I can't believe that with such a crowd of such connected people we wouldn't have just one memeber who does!

 

[marctronixx]

i could try but i have a much better home theater setup and prefer to use it over the tablet.

having the ability to do this on the xoom is nice but its not something i use.

i understand your points. HDMI audio is embedded in the stream and again is just passing thru whats coming from the tablet. i am not sure of the vids i have on the xoom if any of them would have DTS level sound (i have some 70's and low budget vids on the xoom).

if im not ablt to test for certain im sure someone will post here after seeing this refreshed. but this is a low level item for me..

with the 3.1 update out, you may hear more info on this. my gut though thinks it will pass the audio stream as it is natively..

 

[tjreishus]

"70's and low budget"???? You've opened yourself up with that one. LOL

 

[yakboy]

marctronixx - thanks for the further response. If you do get a chance to try it on your home cinema setup (HDMI pass-thru your TV would do it if you don't have dedicated HDMI-in on your processor) I'd really appreciate it.

My own setup isn't too bad (Marantz Processor, Kef 2005.1, 42" LG LCD) and I've found that I'm no longer grabbing 1080p content, the difference in quality between 720p and 1080p just ain't that much. As such the Xoom would be the ideal replacement for my MPC-HC equipped Asus ion-equipped netbook. I barely do any video processing and I always let my processor do all the audio-legwork so the Xoom may well be good enough, and have the benefit of being simple to use and unlikely to overheat (unlike the Asus netbook, bloody thing!)