Playing Dolby 5.1 surround DVDs on laptop.

[Ant]

Our Dell Inspiron 1501 lappy (onboard stereo sound card by SigmaTel) can't seem to reproduce the centre dialogue channel properly. Its much too quiet when the music and effects are at normal level. Our main PC (also with onboard stereo card) has no problems. Can't find adjustments for this, and online chat with Dell support 10 mins back suggested Dolby surround never plays back properly with stereo cards. Rubbish I think!
Any ideas?

[All Ahead Full]

Have you changed the replay options to be 5.1 under the control panel:

Control Panel:
Sounds and Audio devices
Audio Tab
Advanced button, on the Sound Playback box (top one)
and change the speaker setup to be 5.1 Surround.

Alternatively you could always buy a USB Sound card, which I recently got (around £30) which you can just plug into any PC/Laptop, and it just works.

all the best,

AAF