Question

Does playing video with Silverlight 5 support the playback of Dolby Digital (AC-3) 5.1 surround sound, or will it always downmix the channels to stereo?

I’m streaming a Smooth Streaming video, but the Silverlight Smooth Streaming Sample Player doesn’t seem to support Dolby audio playback.

Answer 1

No with default players.

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc189080%28v=vs.95%29.aspx#delivery_method_containers_and_codecs

Quote:

(For WMA audio, the only one mentioning surround sound)
Multichannel (5.1 and 7.1 surround) audio content is automatically mixed down to stereo.

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And for Smooth Streaming:

http://www.iis.net/learn/media/smooth-streaming/smooth-streaming-client-readme

Not many details here, supported audio codec is AAC.

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See also here:

http://www.iis.net/learn/media/smooth-streaming/smooth-streaming-primer#create_piff

Supported codecs are AAC and WMA/WMA Pro.