difficulty getting audio out of my HDMI cable

I have a Dell XPS M1530, running Windows 7. I was having difficulty getting audio out of my HDMI cable, connecting to my Sony Home Theatre. I was looking for settings in my computer and couldn't find any.

I found the answer in Windows Media Centre.

Look for the option Settings,

then General,

Windows Media Center Setup,

Set up your speakers, next,

HDMI, next,

then selected the option for my system, next,

and then Test, and it worked.

This wasn't too hard. I found it and went through the above yesterday without (trial and) error, and reproduced it just now without difficulty. I have detailed the steps above just for the purpose of documenting the process.

This process may well work with all laptops and even desktop computers if they are in the same room as the TV. I bought a long HDMI cable so that I didn't need to have the laptop sitting right next to my home theatre system. I am probably about 3-4 metres away from the TV/home theatre.

Next point is that the operating system may not matter.

And the brand of home theatre is likely to be irrelevant.

Why did I want to connect my laptop to my home theatre? Mainly because I wanted to use my TV for video and the M1530 speakers are crap. So, if you have videos on your laptop, then you can watch them on your TV by following the instructions above.

This assumes that your video card in your computer supports audio as well as video.

Now I am thinking about getting a Mac next, but they don't have HDMI. I think the solution to that is to buy Apple TV as well.

So currently, with my Dell laptop and HDMI, I can connect to my home theatre for improved video and audio.

Hope this helps someone.

Cheers

John