Doh! Apparently, every Intel based Mac since early 2006 has had a new feature that Apple has completely failed to market. I have owned a few of these Macs and never knew about this feature, and others have probably skipped Apple products not knowing it was available.
The feature I am referring to is the “combined optical digital audio output / headphone out” that shows up on MacBooks, MacBook Pros, Intel based Mac Minis, and Intel based iMacs that are made after early 2006. This little tiny port works fine as a headphones jack (which we all expected) and works well to put analog stereo output into a stereo system via a little splitter/adaptor cable available at any electronics store. What I failed to notice was that the same tiny little port can also be used with a $3 adaptor and an optical TOSLINK cable to output digital 5.1 channel sound to any amp/receiver with a TOSLINK input on the back!
Surround sound out of nearly every Mac made since 2006?! Cool. I thought it was only on the Mac Pro models (which come with full sized TOSLINK ports on the back, and did even in the PowerMac G5 days).
The forehead smacking continues while I order either an adaptor or an adapting cable:
Amazon has several options at adaptors, or adapting cables
This will enable my Mac Mini to deliver 5.1 surround sound to my receiver, and since there are DVI to HDMI adaptors, I can also display high definition video to the big screen.
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Yup, use it all the time to play video from the laptops on the big screen. The downside? Sometimes the switch that goes from normal headphone jack to TOS gets stuck in the on position, and you lose all ability to play sound w/out headphones. That’s been the case with one of our macbooks for about a year, now.
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