I have an asus motherboard with onboard via8233 sound. It has a digital spdif coaxial output which currently sends sound to my stereo system. I have the opensound.com drivers because I could never get alsa to work.
I just got a dvd drive and I want to send the a52 sound to my stereo to decode. Currently both xine and vlc decode the sound and put the docoded sound out my spdif port. I have searched the internet extensively for the commands to make this work, but none of the answers I turn up do anything.
One I found was to start vlc with --spdif but that doesn't change anything.
I am using debian unstable and vlc 0.7 and xine 0.9.23. Help for either or both would be greatly appreciated and if you need more info just ask.
Thanks in advance.

I can't believe it. . .I too am using Debian unstable, with via82xxx OSS sound driver, can't get alsa to work but would like to use the SPDIF out as well, (it works slick in windows), and I haven't tried it yet with the VLC player, or the other one yet. . .I will try posting in justlinux too. . .Lemme know if u find the answer and I will do the same if I do. . .

oh yea, you might wanna try mplayer too. . .

I used this script page to help me out:

http://kanotix.com/files/