Itunes 8.1.1 dolby 5.1, has anyone out there had this work via optical...

Question

I know Apple says you can rent HD movies with dolby 5.1 surround, but my questions is how do you know you are renting a HD rental as apposed to standard resolution. And can you get the 5.1 to playback using a mac not an apple tv.
On the store it shows HD for purchase, standard for purchase, and rental. I rented Saw 4 with those options listed and it was standard not HD and the surround sound was only playing in stereo. I know that in the past versions of itunes it can only playback 5.1 when using an apple tv but not with a mac.
I have my old G5 hooked to my Sony hd tv and the optical audio out going to my receiver. I know past verions of quicktime downstreams the 5.1 audio to stereo even though it has a 5.1 audio track. It is odd that is taking so long for 5.1 to come to quicktime, and itunes. Elgato's EyeTV software has been able to playback 5.1 and hd for years now. Quicktime player feels ancient to me. I know VLC can do 5.1 if you mess about with stuff but I don't want to be bothered with that.
Has anyone rented or purchased a movie and gotten 5.1 playback in itunes 8.1.1
I can't see spending 20 dollars ever to buy a movie because I just watch it once and move on to the next, so I don't want to spend the 20 for a hd movie just to find out if itunes can play the 5.1 via a mac or not. I did see when I updated to 8.1.1 that you had to have that version for HD rentals, I had 8.1 when I rented Saw 4.
Apple advertises 5.1 but they do not make it clear if it is only possible whith an apple tv. They advertise the new hd movies as having 5.1 but what good is that if it down streams it to stereo when using itunes and a mac.
I think the itunes store should be more forthright about what you are getting when renting a movie. I also think they should add book marking in itunes so you can bookmark a movie, or an app, or a music download so you can easily find it at a later date without having to search the store again. Why they don't just have a rental area is beyond me. I find it to be a real pain to find rentals because half the time the movies are just for purchase, they should split them movies for purchase or movies for rental areas on the store, and be able to bookmark them so you can just go and download movies you bookmarked when your ready to buy or rent. Sorry I want a little over the top but I would still like to know if anyone has used itunes 8.1.1 and gotten 5.1 playback via their mac.

Answer 1

So I guess only Apple TV can play the surround tracks not a mac which means nothing has changed with the update. I believe it's because quicktime has not been updated to play 5.1 and itunes uses quicktime for video playback. But I thought I saw an add saying hd with 5.1 with the new itunes but I guess it's just HD and no surround out of a mac. It really seems silly at this point. I stream eyetv hdtv recordings with full surround to my G5 that is wired to my HDTV from my computer upstairs or to my mac book pro and it works great. Streaming HD with full 5.1 surround on my local network is great. These are the original broadcast streams and there is a lot more data than Apples compressed h264 "hidef" videos. So what is holding apple back from doing this? Maybe the next version of quicktime will have 5.1 playback, let's hope so because Apple is way behind on this. I don't rent movies from the itunes store, because there is no 5.1 playback if there was I would.
I guess I will just stick with Netfilx dvd rentals for now. For being a cutting edge company and I do love apple products this one issue is really behind the ball. I guess they still want us all to buy an apple tv but the mini allows you to do so much more that for an extra 200 bucks especially with the new video card I would go for the mini. My old G5 1.8 dual does the job nicely but it is just fast enough to play hd 5.1 streams and a bit noisy, a mini would be more powerful and quieter.
One side note is that I was able to get my G5 which is hooked into the tv via dvi
to fit the tv's screen perfectly which was not easy because its native res is 728p not 720. This is a problem with most lower res hd tv's the manufactures did not go with 720 but went a little higher, so when you hook a computer up to it it either over scans the desktop so you can't see the menus or the dock or it underscans it and you get black around the desktop. I have an ati 800xt in my g5 and with ati's preference pane called ati displays, it allows you to resize your desktop to fit the screen I wish apple had this built into the system. It only works with certain ati video cards. I just read on another forum that 1080p tv's don't have this problem of over scanning because they are "1080p" so you can hook a mac up and the mac should fit it perfectly. Now I want a new mac mini and a 1080p tv. And so it goes....oh and 5.1 sound would be nice Apple!!!!