geeji, ok, that clears things up for me a little bit...I suspect what you're calling a bug is not an actual bug at all, that both EyeTV and OS X and Apple dvdplayer.app are working exactly the way they're supposed to and that nothing needs to be fixed by either El Gato or Apple. Here's why:
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I just get no sound when the one which "holds" the Digital Out is in the background
OK, when you do return, let's define which apps and which behavior, "holds" the digital out for you.
Here's where I have a bit of a problem, though: why is something, anything, holding digital out in the background...the only way for any app to "hold" digital out is because you're actively watching something, so in most viewing situations why would you want something else to acquire digital out?
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Using the Midi application, I checked that when you close the EyeTV playback windows with AC3, while recording an AC3 program, Midi displays again the 2 channels / 16 bits.
Good...not allowing MIDI to switch back to 2ch-16bit when you closed the EyeTV playback window WAS the legitimate bug El Gato once had to fix. This is what I thought you were experiencing...glad to hear that's not the case.
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BUT the Digital Out of DVD Player is still NOT passing through, I have to stop DVD Player (which otherwise remains stuck on System Out, without offering the Digital Out option in Preferences), restart DVD Player, switch back to Digital Out, THEN I get an encoded AC3 sound and Midi confirms it
An initial question, why is Apple dvdplayer.app even open at this point? If I understand you correctly, you were watching an EyeTV recording with proper AC-3 passthrough...why do you have to "stop" anything regarding dvd player? What most of us would do is close the EyeTV playback window, it releases digital out, even if the EyeTV app remains open and still recording, then open DVD Player, open a media file, it acquires digital out, start watching something. Done this way, DVD Player will always open and sense that digital out is available for you, right?
There's no good reason that I can think of to keep the dvd player app open on your desktop doing nothing--it's easy to open with remote apps, easy to switch to from Plex since Plex does such a poor job handling VIDEO_TS, etc. But, for investigative purposes and because it's an interesting question, let's say you DO want both apps open all the time.
Here's what I'd do: with both EyeTV and Apple dvdplayer.app preferences set for digital out, and both apps closed, open DVD player first. As part of the opening process, I'm gonna assume two things happen--first, it notes that you've set its audio preference to digital out, and second, it peeks into AudioMIDI to see if "encoded digital out" is already being used by something else. Since it's not, DVD Player says to itself "It's OK to pass through AC-3 and DTS when required," and the app remains ready to alert CoreAudio that encoded digital might be coming its way. Leave the DVD Player window open.
(Momentary diversion--this is what iTunes does as well when it first opens, it checks AudioMIDI to see what audio output settings you've selected, which determines what sample rate conversion will be performed by iTunes, and later what SRC will be applied by CoreAudio itself, if any. If iTunes is already open, and then you change AudioMIDI, iTunes retains what it sensed at opening, it will only detect the new setting after closing and re-opening.)
Then open EyeTV and play an EyeTV recording back with AC-3. Quit that playback window but leave the EyeTV app open.
Now switch back to the DVD Player window, select a file, start playing it back with AC-3 or DTS and I bet it'll have no trouble acquiring the digital out and pass through to your AVR just fine. Why? Because when you opened the app initially, nothing was currently holding onto encoded digital out in AudioMIDI. Now, I'm not 100% positive on this, but this is the behavior I've noticed...I think where you may be getting tripped up is that somewhere along the way, when you return to Apple dvdplayer.app, some odd behavior of yours has caused it to poll AudioMIDI, it discovered that encoded digital was in use by something else, and switched off digital and onto system sound out within its preferences. That's why, at that point, you have to close and re-open DVD Player--it doesn't think it even has the option of encoded digital out anymore.
Test this, with both apps closed, open EyeTV first, start playing back a file with AC-3--then pause playback, mid-stream, leaving the playback window open. Then open DVD Player app and look at its audio preferences...I bet it's locked onto system sound, even if that last time you set the preference to digital.
So, if you do want to keep both DVD Player and EyeTV open on your desktop, just open DVD Player first with nothing else going on, let it sense that encoded digital isn't taken up by anything else, and you should be able to switch over to it later from any other app, including EyeTV, as long as you've finished watching whatever you were watching and closed that playback window.
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since the AC3 sound is muted when the EyeTV window is in the background, I do not understand why it could not do the hold/release action implicitly...as explained above, even explicit stop is not enough to reacquire sound from DVD Player, I have to stop/restart it
Is it just this one very specific scenario that I've outlined--you've been watching some EyeTV with DD 5.1, Apple dvdplayer.app just happens to already be open at the time, you stop watching an EyeTV recording and close its playback window, then you click on the already open DVD Player, tell it to open a file, try to select its AC-3 track, and find you can't?
Does the same thing happen in reverse for you--with DVD Player and EyeTV open, watching a dvd with AC-3, close that media file but leave the app open, then start playing back an EyeTV recording--will you get AC-3 passthrough? (I suspect you can get AC-3.)
Another hypothetical, if instead of returning to an already open Apple dvdplayer.app after EyeTV, you opened the same VIDEO_TS from within Plex or Front Row, do you get AC-3? (I suspect you will.) Just for the hell of it I tried something right now: I started playing back an EyeTV recording with AC-3--paused it mid-stream, window open--then entered Front Row, selected a VIDEO_TS with AC-3, started playing it back and it passed that AC-3 through to my AVR just fine. Closed it, left FR, resumed playback of that EyeTV, AC-3 resumed just fine.
So, I guess what I'm leading up to is this: is it accurate to say that your only AC-3 frustration is when returning to an already open Apple dvd player.app? Are there other instances you can re-create or remember?
I can't comment about AC-3 sound being muted when the EyeTV window is moved to the back because I've never done that--normally I'd watch an EyeTV recording, then when I'm done that I close that file/window, and either open a different recording in EyeTV, enter Front Row or Plex or open Apple dvdplayer.app, which is normally closed. I honestly never find myself in a situation with 1) a still open EyeTV playback window 2) wanting to open and watch something in a different app.
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I understand EyeTV would not be aware, but OS X would be, and could/should emulate a release.
If I'm interpreting your comments correctly, this gets to the crux of your issue--you wish OS X, Core Audio and AudioMIDI functioned differently and had different "rules" or behavior, some kind of smart intuition about what a user intends merely by moving windows to the front? If that's the case, I think I'm happier the way things stand, even with that Apple dvdplayer.app behavior, because it's fairly clean and consistent.
There are a few clear problems with Quicktime and AC-3, the Perian developers in particular have done a great job pointing these out, and Apple hasn't been the most consistent or responsive in addressing them, but I think those problems are probably not related to your "bug."