I have a linux box hooked up to an amplifier via optical out, I use MPD to play music out through the amp. I also watch movies using a Popcorn Hour connected to the amp and to a projector. During daylight it's not really possible to use the projector so I want to watch TV programs on my Windows laptop, but still take advantage of the amp.
I outline 2 possible options I've thought of:
- I'd like to grab the lineout from windows, and funnel it over the network to a linux box that is connected to my amp.
- I guess that merely grabbing the lineout might introduce a significant latency making watching videos as I want quite painful. I wonder whether instead it might be possible to write a virtual sound card driver for windows to stream the lineout data to the linux box in some manner (probably UDP for latency reasons) to be passed through the sound device.
I've looked into using pulseaudio and (separately) jack, but neither seem to offer a particularly good solution to my problem.
I've never written a windows driver of any type so I think that option (2) would likely be a very steep learning curve. But option (1) seems doomed for latency reasons. Any input is welcome into the best solution to this problem.
Obviously I could connect my laptop to the amp. I'd prefer not to do this for noise reasons with a 3.5mm jack, and the laptop has no S/PDIF.