asus tech support no help, g1s-b2

after several emails with asus and a lot of reading i still can't find answers to a couple of issues i have had since i bought a g1s-b2. I am running vista 32 bit sp1. So far so good but there are 2 questions i have. First, is it possible to swap my stock optical drive with the sony optiarc BC-5500A blu-ray drive? it looks like they are compatible but i have heard the g1s uses a different power/voltage configuration for the optical drive to help reduce heat and that this might be a problem if i try to exchange drives.
Second, i can't understand why i can get 5.1 output through the spdif jack when i play a dvd movie in the optical drive or if i run the dolby digital test in the realtek control panel but if i am trying to play a game with 5.1 no matter what i do it will only output 2 channel. any advice or answers would be appreciated, i have found a lot of really good info on this site about this laptop but hard to find info about these 2 questions, thanks

 

i forgot to ask if updating my bios to 300 would help any of these issues, i have had no other problems so i have left the stock bios alone.

 

Sorry I can't offer any help but I would also like to change my DVD writer to a Blu-Ray Drive in my ASUS V1S.

Can anyone offer any advice.

 

the drive it self will work and fit however the faceplate probably will not. so you will be stuck with a working drive but no faceplate.
When you set up the realtec driver from scratch (not preloaded) it gives you an option for digital support. preloaded drivers are set to disable digital. you should also have thise option somewhere in the realtec admin panel

 

Thanks for the response, I guess I could make do with the blu-ray drive as long as the drive would close enough so that the disc could be read by the laser, otherwise there would'nt be any point. as for the DD i have enabled all different bit rates and DTS and DD in realtek, when i do a test there is 5.1 being output and dvd movies have 5.1 so i am lost as to why i can't make games work but if you think re-installing the audio drivers might prompt me for more digital options i will give it a try, i will try pretty much anything at this point. thanks again for the info

 

no sorry if dvd and tests do support 5.1 while games do not the driver is fine. aside from having 5.1 out enabled in the actual games i can not think of a reason why 5.1 would not work if it already works with dvds