[MPlayer-users] stupid question - "spdif" AND "hw=2"

[Reimar Döffinger]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 01:03:32PM -0400, Andrew wrote:
> But then, even with "hw=2.1" (without the explicit error messages), I only get two channels, not six! 

Sounds to me like that is just the "normal" output, not SPDIF.
Maybe this helps you:
http://alsa.opensrc.org/DigitalOut
I think you need to use something like
iec958:CARD=...,DEV=...
except that I think you can't directly with MPlayer so you'll probably
have to modify your alsa config (unless e.g. aplay -L already shows a
suitable alias for it).