What hardware needed to capture audio from STB in 5.1?

[Wam7]

I have a Sky STB (Amstrad DRX890W) and would like to capture 5.1 audio via the HDMI. At the moment I can capture video and audio but that is just in AC3 2.0 using either Avermedia Capture HD or BlackMagic Shuttle.

[Brad]

If you can force the STB to output 5.1 to the Blackmagic, most or all of their capture devices can capture bitstreams into the 2-channel WAV track which BeSplit can then manually turn into a 5.1 AC3 file. If you do successfully capture the bitstream, it will sound like a lot of extremely loud, annoying noise before it's processed. Don't try playing it with the sound up.

[Wam7]

If you can force the STB to output 5.1 to the Blackmagic, most or all of their capture devices can capture bitstreams into the 2-channel WAV track which BeSplit can then manually turn into a 5.1 AC3 file. If you do successfully capture the bitstream, it will sound like a lot of extremely loud, annoying noise before it's processed. Don't try playing it with the sound up.

OK thanks, I will give that a try. I presume there is no way to capture the 5.1 on the fly, so there is no need for post processing?

[Brad]

I'm not sure whether you meant Intensity Shuttle or HyperDeck Shuttle, but both can capture 8-channel LPCM, so technically you could capture without post-processing if your STB supported multi-channel PCM output. It almost definitely doesn't though, especially since you're currently getting 2-channel.

The filesizes that way would be enormous, with no benefit to quality.

The alternative is a capture device from another manufacturer, like Hauppauge.