"House cinema" as computer speakers, additional set of rear speakers etc

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My friend has recently bought a "house cinema" set with five speakers and subwoofer. When he uses the optical port to plug into the computer, only the front two play. Speakers are okay because they work perfectly all right in the normal house cinema mode outside the computer connection, like playing a CD or something. What might we be missing?

And I'm going to get some technical details soon if that will help. Thanks in advance for any help. He's quite upset having spent so much money on it just to have the all-around sound on his computer.

Edit:

And another problem I have is that after plugging in another set of speakers (a front set and a rear set now, no central or subwoofer stuff), I can hear the rear ones in testing but they don't really participate in playing music. Why would that be? How can I change this? I would like to have the all-around-me effect too. :/ If I silence down the front set (what I've always had), there's just no sound (the rear speakers don't even play system sounds).

[ October 06, 2006, 18:08: Message edited by: chevalier ]

 

In your PC, the sound card may be set to two speaker mode. Right click on the speaker icon in the system tray and select something lke 'adjust audio properties'. Then set the speakers to surround. Assuming your sound card has this kind of menu

 

I had this problem with my speakers. But it turns out that my default sound card only supported a single speaker input...whereas most of these speaker sets have 2 inputs, one for the front channels and one for the rear.

I went and picked up a 2-in-1 adapter from a local electronics shop and that fixed the problem for me. Do you have a dual-input in your system's sound card?? If you do...then I guess the problem is something else, but if you don't...this might be it!