The Xbox One will not support Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound via its optical out port at launch.

Optical out is the red fiber-optic port most commonly used by surround sound home cinemas or headphone systems for true 5.1-channel audio. At launch, Xbox One's optical port will only output stereo sound.

Microsoft director of product planning Albert Penello confirmed via a post on NeoGAF, "Dolby Digital is coming post launch."

He went on, "This was a [software] scheduling issue pure and simple, and I know people are disappointed, but we will have it.

"Anyone with an HDMI receiver should be fine, as we pass the uncompressed 5.1 and 7.1 through HDMI as well as DTS. Even if you have a Dolby only HDMI receiver (which I'm not sure exists), you will still get 5.1 or 7.1 sound since those receivers should accept uncompressed surround," he said.

This means that 5.1 audio received from a device into the Xbox One's HDMI In port will be passed unaffected through to the HDMI Out port.

"For the Dolby only headsets, my understanding is that these will work but you will only get stereo audio since we only pass Stereo and DTS through the optical port," Penello added.

Penello went on to clarify that the console's HDMI In Audio setting defaults to stereo, but can be switch to 5.1 audio via a 'beta' setting in Xbox One's setup menus.

"We default HDMI-IN audio to be converted to Stereo," said Penello. "However, we do have a feature you can access in TV settings/Troubleshooting that enables Surround Sound in 'beta' form.

"If you check the box, and you get Surround, you're golden. We found some inconsistencies in [set-top boxes] during testing and decided to disable it by default to insure a good initial setup experience for people."

In our Xbox One review, we called it "a platform that has laid foundations that it can build on for a whole generation", while calling the new Kinect sensor "the single most impressive element of the Xbox One system at launch".

Xbox One launches in US and Europe on Friday.

Posted: Nov 21, 2013 3:09 pm
Related Forum: Xbox Forum

Source: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/439649/xbox-one-lacks-optical-dolby-51-post-launch-patch-promised/