AC3 support natively in iOS and tvOS

[ssbmaccom]

As mentioned in the forum topic about VLC not supporting... (https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=125032) it looks like AC3 and even eAC3 support is now natively available in iOS and tvOS.
As I get complaints, that my app based on VLCKit on tvOS is not supporting Dolby 5.1 audio inside transport streams (streamed from sattelite tv receivers), while other apps do so, I would like to know:
- can i tell VLCKit to pass through the audio substream to CoreAudio?
- do I need a newer version of VLCKit to automatically have it supported (afaik latest VLCKit version is from May 10th)?

Any support is welcome, as I am about to release vesion 1.1 soon (already in beta). and I would like to have a solution there...

Thx in advance SSB

[ssbmaccom]

Ah, I just checked today for new version of VLCKit and - sorry - I missed some updates. Maybe I haven't seen the commits in the mailing list.
I am now building a new VLCKit from scratch and - I hope it works - will check the result.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

[ssbmaccom]

ah, looks, like this patch is already available since a while.
But testers report, that they always get the stereo mix-down instead of AC-3/Dolby 5.1.

Would enabling the "toSPDIF" option for the mediaplayer instance solve the issue?
If yes, i would extend VLCKit to expose this option to VLCKit, so I can enable this option from my app.
Any hints welcome...

[ssbmaccom]

OK, I tried a bit - and well: it looks like creating a player instance with custom options (adding --spdif) solves the issues.
So, problem solved.
I would just like to get the default setting for the current platform, would be much easier than collecting them from the VLCKit sources.

[ssbmaccom]

OK... me again... not sure if anyone else is actually reading this...

Well, using --spdif option makes sure, that the audio-stream is natively routed to the HDMI-Audio channel of the AppleTV. I assume it simply uses a device drIver socket for audio output.
Works fine but has some strange side effects:
- audio may be out of sync (ahead of image)
- tvOS does not know about this. Eg the focus engine sounds reach the speakers with really "interesting" distortions.

So, it looks like it is not really compatible - more a hackers detour.
So - does anyone has advice how to configure VLCKit to make multi-channel audio work??